Polina Kurtser , Kailun Feng , Thomas Olofsson , Aitor De Andres
{"title":"One-class anomaly detection through color-to-thermal AI for building envelope inspection","authors":"Polina Kurtser , Kailun Feng , Thomas Olofsson , Aitor De Andres","doi":"10.1016/j.enbuild.2024.115052","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"<div><div>Characterizing the energy performance of building components and locating anomalies is necessary for effectively refurbishing existing buildings. It is often challenging because defects in building envelopes deteriorate without being visible. Passive infrared thermography (PIRT) is a powerful tool used in building inspection. However, thermal image interpretation requires significant domain knowledge and is prone to artifacts arising from a complex interplay of factors. As a result, PIRT-based inspections require skilled professionals, and are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise to automate building inspection, but its application remains challenging because common approaches rely on extensive labeling and supervised modeling. It is recognized that there is a need for a more applicable and flexible approach to leverage AI to assist PIRT in realistic building inspections. In this study, we present a label-free method for detecting anomalies during thermographic inspection of building envelopes. It is based on the AI-driven prediction of thermal distributions from color images. Effectively the method performs as a one-class classifier of the thermal image regions with a high mismatch between the predicted and actual thermal distributions. The algorithm can learn to identify certain features as normal or anomalous by selecting the target sample used for training. The proposed method has unsupervised modeling capabilities, greater applicability and flexibility, and can be widely implemented to assist human professionals in routine building inspections or combined with mobile platforms to automate the inspection of large areas.</div></div>","PeriodicalId":11641,"journal":{"name":"Energy and Buildings","volume":"328 ","pages":"Article 115052"},"PeriodicalIF":6.6000,"publicationDate":"2024-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Energy and Buildings","FirstCategoryId":"5","ListUrlMain":"https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S037877882401168X","RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"工程技术","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"CONSTRUCTION & BUILDING TECHNOLOGY","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
Characterizing the energy performance of building components and locating anomalies is necessary for effectively refurbishing existing buildings. It is often challenging because defects in building envelopes deteriorate without being visible. Passive infrared thermography (PIRT) is a powerful tool used in building inspection. However, thermal image interpretation requires significant domain knowledge and is prone to artifacts arising from a complex interplay of factors. As a result, PIRT-based inspections require skilled professionals, and are labor-intensive and time-consuming. Artificial intelligence (AI) holds great promise to automate building inspection, but its application remains challenging because common approaches rely on extensive labeling and supervised modeling. It is recognized that there is a need for a more applicable and flexible approach to leverage AI to assist PIRT in realistic building inspections. In this study, we present a label-free method for detecting anomalies during thermographic inspection of building envelopes. It is based on the AI-driven prediction of thermal distributions from color images. Effectively the method performs as a one-class classifier of the thermal image regions with a high mismatch between the predicted and actual thermal distributions. The algorithm can learn to identify certain features as normal or anomalous by selecting the target sample used for training. The proposed method has unsupervised modeling capabilities, greater applicability and flexibility, and can be widely implemented to assist human professionals in routine building inspections or combined with mobile platforms to automate the inspection of large areas.
期刊介绍:
An international journal devoted to investigations of energy use and efficiency in buildings
Energy and Buildings is an international journal publishing articles with explicit links to energy use in buildings. The aim is to present new research results, and new proven practice aimed at reducing the energy needs of a building and improving indoor environment quality.