Cost-effective as-built BIM modelling using 3D point clouds and photogrammetry

The classification and translation of 3D point-clouds into virtual environments is a time consuming and often tedious process. While there are large crowdsourcing projects for segmenting general environments, there are no such projects with a focus on AEC industries. The nature of these industries makes industry-specific projects too esoteric for conventional approaches to data collation. However, in contrast to other projects, the built environment has a rich data set of BIM and other 3D models with mutable properties and implicitly embedded relationships which are ripe for exploitation. In this article, the readers will find discussion on contemporary applications of image processing, photogrammetry, BIM and artificial intelligence. They will also find discussions on the applications of artificial intelligence, photogrammetry in BIM and image processing that will likely be at the forefront of related research in the coming years.