Assessing earthquake damages with wearable reality capture

作者：Frank Collazo

On Sept. 19, 2017, a powerful 7.1 magnitude earthquake shook Mexico City and the surrounding states. The earthquake caused the collapse of several buildings, killing 369 people and injuring more than 6,000. Damaged infrastructure also included destroyed bridges, roads, and water and electricity utilities. Mexico City was the most affected with 228 deaths and 38 buildings collapsed. More than 800 buildings are in red code, meaning that they did not collapse but will be demolished.

To aid in the recovery, national and local emergency management authorities asked Mexico City-based Leica Geosystems staff to safely document the damage using remote sensing, reality capture technologies.

Reality capture’s role in emergency management

这Leica Pegasus：背包andLeica ScanStation P40were deployed to laser scan and image as many collapsed buildings as possible to document the damages and capture up-to-date maps, photos and plans of buildings and infrastructure.

这Pegasus:Backpack proved to be invaluable as it could quickly,安全，轻松地捕获3D中无法访问的灾区，并步行记录整个块。扫描仪P40激光扫描了严重损坏的未汇总建筑物以进行结构分析。在墨西哥城受影响最大的地区崩溃的建筑物的所有数据均由两名员工捕获不到两个小时and processed on the same day. Critical data was captured before debris and rubble were removed and is now a permanent record in the form of ArcGIS-compatible point clouds and panoramic images.

现在，墨西哥的灾难管理机构在线访问此数据Leica Pegasus：Webviewer，Leica Geosystems的Web查看服务，该服务允许用户通过处理的图像和点云进行导航，分析和协作。

“借助Leica Pegasus的地理参考信息：背包，我们确切地知道每个门，巷子和窗户都在哪里。现在，我可以给我的机组人员准确说明去哪里以及在到达那里之前的期望。没有数据，灾难管理是一个复杂的过程，”said Dr. Armando Aguilar, president of the Commission on Safety and Hygiene and Civil Protection.

All georeferenced panoramic imagery taken with the Pegasus:Backpack is an orderly record of the disaster sites that will aid future forensics investigations. With Pegasus:WebViewer, emergency personal could see on site the exact state of collapsed buildings before debris and rubble were removed. All information captured by Leica Geosystems’ staff was shared and made available to National Civil Protection Agency and local Mexico City government through a webserver for the Pegasus WebViewer .

使用最大的参考网络访问GNSS数据

During data collection with the Pegasus:Backpack, the team relied on the new HxGN SmartNet GNSS base stations in Mexico City to immediately process the GNSS data generated by the mobile mapping solution. Thanks to HxGN SmartNet, a satellite positioning service, GNSS data was available in real time and the team didn’t have to wait about 24 hours to download data from the closest Mexico City public GNSS base stations.

“我们在地震发生前完成了HXGN Smartnet墨西哥第一阶段的安装。我们很高兴在此事件之后提供基站，以便立即向我们的团队使用Pegasus：背包后处理。我们正在2018年初在该国推出订阅服务，”said Cinthia Salinas, HxGN SmartNet coordinator for MexAm region.

“We are also receiving a lot of concrete interest for developing HxGN SmartNet in Central and South America. We anticipate HxGN SmartNet Mexico will be the first of many HxGN SmartNet stations to be developed throughout Latin America over the next few years,”NAFTA地区的HXGN SmartNet高级项目工程师Jill Johnson补充了Jill Johnson。

我们对墨西哥城表示最诚挚的慰问，并保留所有受地震影响的人在日常思想中。