Abstract

Piling On: Using GIS for Structural Analysis of Marine Piers
Track: Architecture, Engineering, and Construction
Authors: Gary Ostroff

Creatively applying GIS to individual built-structures provides ways to simplify engineering calculations, analysis, and inspection work. Halcrow used GIS to speed underwater inspections, to calculate load capacity surfaces (2 and 3-D), and to process LIDAR data to generate accurate bid and quantity specifications.

Underwater diver inspections comprise thousands of individual piles, and hand-held devices are infeasible for use by the divers. Divers communicate observations top-side by radio to a note-taker, formerly using paper CAD drawings. Halcrow created a field application that eliminates the paper, speeds data entry, performs error checking, and vastly reduces the time required to produce the final deliverable report.

The spatial database of piles was used to create classified load bearing capacity maps of individual piers, and employed Voronoi raster functionality to compute load distribution. Using raster functions, we were able to quickly and accurately calculate from LIDAR voids to be filled for a quay wall rehabilitation