Online

Pereira, Mauricio

Mechanical Engineering

2019

M.S.

The ASCE confers an overall D+ grade to American infrastructure, while the NAE lists the restoration and improvement of urban infrastructure as one of its grand engineering challenges for the 21st century, indicating that infrastructure renovation and development is a major challenge in the US. Furthermore, according to the UN World Urbanization Prospects, about 55% of the world's population lives in urban areas and this percentage is set to grow, especially in Africa and Asia. The growth of urban population poses challenges to the expansion of underground infrastructure, such as water, sewage, electricity and telecommunications. Localization and mapping of underground infrastructure are fundamental for infrastructure maintenance and development. Ground penetrating radar (GPR) is a remote sensing method capable of detecting subsurface assets that has been used in the localization and mapping of underground utilities. This thesis contributes improvements of GPR systems and imaging algorithms towards smarter infrastructure, specifically: Application of GPR imaging algorithm to improve GPR data readability and generate augmented reality (AR) content; Use of photogrammetric methods to improve GPR positioning for underground infrastructure localization and mapping.