Assessment of visualization software for support of construction site inspection tasks using data collected from reality capture technologies

Emerging reality capture technologies, such as LADAR and embedded sensing, have potential to increase the efficiency of inspectors by generating detailed data about as-built conditions that can be analyzed in real time and at a later time at an office. The data collected using these systems provide an opportunity to visualize and analyze as-built conditions on construction sites in a more comprehensive way. At the same time, some characteristics of the data collected, such as its size and level of detail, provide unique visualization challenges. Currently available software systems deliver some functionalities to support construction inspection tasks by enabling the visualization and manipulation of the data captured using these reality capture technologies. In this paper, we provide an assessment of some functionalities provided by a set of selected visualization software tools based on the characteristics of the data collected and to be visualized, and on the construction inspection process that need to be supported.