31 Mar 2022

Continued Investigation of Thermal and Lidar Surveys of Building Infrastructure

ABSTRACT: We conducted a combined lidar and thermal infrared survey from both ground-based and Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) platforms at McMurdo Station, Antarctica, in February 2020 to assess the building thermal envelope and infrastructure of the Crary Lab and the wet utility corridor (utilidor). These high-accuracy, coregistered data produced a 3-D model with assigned temperature values for measured surfaces, useful in identifying thermal anomalies and areas for potential improvements and for assessing building and utilidor infrastructure by locating and quantifying areas settlement and structural anomalies. The ground-based survey of the Crary Lab was similar to previous work performed by the team at both Palmer (2015) and South Pole (2017) Stations. The UAS platform focused on approximately 10,500 linear-feet of utilidor throughout McMurdo Station. The datasets of the two survey areas overlapped, allowing us to combine them into a single, georeferenced 3-D model of McMurdo Station. Coincident exterior temperature and atmospheric measurements and Global Navigation Satellite System real-time kinematic surveys provided further insights. Finally, we assessed the thermal envelope of the Crary Lab and the structural features of the utilidor. The resulting dataset is available for analysis and quantification.

23 Jun 2021

Meteorological Property and Temporal Variable Effect on Spatial Semivariance of Infrared Thermography of Soil Surfaces for Detection of Foreign Objects

Abstract: The environmental phenomenological properties responsible for the thermal variability evident in the use of thermal infrared (IR) sensor systems is not well understood. The research objective of this work is to understand the environmental and climatological properties contributing to the temporal and spatial thermal variance of soils. We recorded thermal images of surface temperature of soil as well as several meteorological properties such as weather condition and solar irradiance of loamy soil located at the Cold Regions Research and Engineering Lab (CRREL) facility. We assessed sensor performance by analyzing how recorded meteorological properties affected the spatial structure by observing statistical differences in spatial autocorrelation and dependence parameter estimates.