Terra Drone was engaged to undertake a railway bridge condition inspection for an Engineering firm who typically used scaffolding to inspect ‘at height’ railway bridges. This approach to safely inspect the bridge by desktop is a safe and efficient method for the client to conduct a pre-maintenance inspection without personnel working from heights. This is done bi-annually by the client across a long stretch of lineal railway.
The inspection was undertaken using a combination of terrestrial cameras and remotely piloted aircraft (or drone) to capture ultra-high resolution imagery of the entire bridge structure, suitable for condition and deformation monitoring.
The client was provided access to a web-based platform to easily access resulting data, make accurate measurements and to flag any areas of concern for rectification.
The approach saved the client significant cost and time over the traditional inspection method, reduced exposure hours and negated the need to temporarily close the bridge to rail traffic.
Future repeat inspections will integrate change detection analysis within the models so that anomalies are automatically detected and flagged.
