Pieter: “Measuring damage with a point cloud”

An unfortunate coincidence

A year ago, MEET HET scanned a wooden palisade in Hoboken. This palisade served to dock for a ferry and was measured and scanned in function of a new bridge that was to be placed there. A good, fully completed project. Or so we thought anyway.

A few months ago we were contacted again by the same client: a boat had run into this wooden palisade. To properly estimate the damage, we went to re-measure the wooden palisade.

MEET IT: Bye Pieter, how did you handle this?

Pieter: “First of all, the palisade was re-scanned with the same boundaries. These were then matched to each other so that we had exactly the same images. It was very helpful that we had a point cloud from before the accident. That of course made the claim easier.”

“We compared the two point clouds one-to-one and got a difference map between the two point clouds. You could immediately see where there was no problem, and where there was obvious damage.”

What about the damage?

“There was a lot of damage. Some beams were crooked, some were even nowhere to be seen. You could also clearly observe the damage if you looked at the palisade. You can also see this in the photos.”

Were there difficulties?

“The biggest difficulty is that the first scan was done at high tide and the claim scan was done at low tide. This left a piece of data missing that we couldn’t compare. Of course, with the tides, we also had to wait until the water subsided to scan everything.”

An unfortunate but easy coincidence, then?

“Occasionally we do claims, but then you don’t have an initial point cloud. To my knowledge, this was the first time we could measure the claim and compare it with an initial point cloud. So this, accidentally, turned out well,” Pieter says. “It was cool that we could also use this measurement for a different purpose than it was originally needed.”

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