Current procedures in post-earthquake safety and structural assessment are performed by a skilled triage team of
structural engineers/certified inspectors. These procedures, in particular the physical measurement of the damage
properties, are time-consuming and qualitative in nature. Spalling has been accepted as an important indicator of
significant damage to structural elements during an earthquake, and thus provides a sound springboard for a model in
machine vision automated assessment procedures as is proposed in this research. Thus, a novel method that
automatically detects regions of spalling on reinforced concrete columns and measures their properties in image data is
the specific focus of this work. According to this method, the region of spalling is first isolated by way of a local
entropy-based thresholding algorithm. Following this, the properties of the spalled region are depicted by way of
classification of the extent of spalling on the column. The region of spalling is sorted into one of three categories by way
of a novel global entropy-based adaptive thresholding algorithm in conjunction with well-established image processing
methods in template matching and morphological operations. These three categories are specified as the following: (1)
No spalling; (2) Spalling of cover concrete; and (3) Spalling of the core concrete (exposing reinforcement). In addition,
the extent of the spalling along the length of the column is quantified. The method was tested on a database of damaged
RC column images collected after the 2010 Haiti Earthquake, and comparison of the results with manual measurements
indicate the validity of the method.
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