Enrique Valero

• PhD
• Research Associate at University of Edinburgh

Masonry construction is ubiquitous and is most typically employed for the construction of fundamental structural architectural elements. It is thus extremely important in architectural conservation , and visual survey, recording and documentation often start with such primary elements. Recording has, however, traditionally been a laborious manual p...

Masonry structures constitute a significant proportion of the international traditional, and historic built environment. In Scotland alone, there are 500,000 pre-1919 traditional buildings mainly masonry-built, and more than two-thirds of the 300 properties currently in the care of Historic Environment Scotland (HES) are masonry-built. Traditiona...

Obtaining useful data from reality capture devices, such as Terrestrial Laser Scanners (TLS), for the extraction of semantic information and its subsequent use to support Building Information Modelling (BIM) use cases (e.g. Scan-to-BIM or Scan-vs-BIM -based use cases) is a complex task that requires planning and execution expertise. Point clouds of...

This work presents a new system for predicting the movement of people in indoor user environments, based on an advanced Indoor Positioning System (IPS) developed previously by the authors. The mentioned IPS proposes the combination of WiFi Positioning System (WPS) and depth maps provided by RGB-D cameras to improve the efficiency of existing method...

Energy retrofitting is paramount to reduce the use of energy in existing buildings, with benefits to the environment and people’s economy. The increasing use of novel technologies and innovative methodologies, such as Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) and Building Information Modelling (BIM), is contributing to optimise retrofit processes. In the co...

Scan-to-BIM systems convert image and point cloud data into accurate 3D models of buildings. Research on Scan-to-BIM has largely focused on the automated identification of structural components. However, design and maintenance projects require information on a range of other assets including mechanical, electrical, and plumbing (MEP) components. Th...

Traditional visual fabric surveying has been shown to lack accuracy and objectivity, and be characterised by limited interoperability, with other methods significantly reducing productivity and hindering efficiency. Moving beyond established visual survey methods, the rapid evolution of reality capture technologies used for digital documentation, s...

This work presents an integrated Indoor Positioning System which makes use of WiFi signals and RGB cameras, such as surveillance cameras, to track and identify people navigating in complex indoor environments. Previous works have often been based on WiFi, but accuracy is limited. Other works use computer vision, but the problem of identifying concr...

Methods employed for surveying buildings for condition have traditionally been reliant upon visual assessment and manual recording. Survey of traditional masonry also ostensibly conforms to this approach but, due to the sheer volume of masonry units composing walls, it is often prohibitively time consuming, exceptionally complex and ultimately cost...

Changing climatic conditions are contributing to faster deterioration of building fabric. Increasing number of heavy rainfall events can particularly affect historic and Cultural Heritage (CH) buildings. These evolving and uncertain circumstances demand more frequent survey of building fabric to ensure satisfactory repair and maintenance. However,...

Despite the rapid development of reality capture technologies and progress in data processing techniques, current visual strategies for defect surveying are time consuming manual procedures. These methods often deliver subjective and inaccurate outcomes, leading to inconsistent conclusions for defect classification and ultimately repair needs. In t...

While several concrete waviness assessment methods are being developed to overcome the disadvantages of one assessment method over the other, the sparseness of measurements associated with each method prevents from achieving a better understanding of how elevations and undulations change across the surface. Assessing wa-viness over multiple one-dim...

Biomechanical analysis of construction workers has been considerably improved with the development of wearable sensors. Information delivered by these systems is playing an important role in the evaluation of postures as well as in the reduction of work-related musculoskeletal disorders (WRMSDs). In this article, we present a novel system and data...

This article presents a novel ontology aiming to connect an Indoor Positioning System (IPS) to Europeana, the European Union digital platform for cultural heritage. The main purpose of this system is to deliver information about Cultural Heritage Objects (CHO) to users navigating in museums, when they approach certain pieces of art. Although differ...

This work presents an Indoor Positioning System to estimate the location of people navigating in complex indoor environments. The developed technique combines WiFi Positioning Systems and depth maps, delivering promising results in complex inhabited environments, consisting of various connected rooms, where people are freely moving. This is a non-i...

This work presents a novel strategy to decipher fragments of Egyptian cartouches identifying the hieroglyphs of which they are composed. A cartouche is a drawing, usually inside an oval, that encloses a group of hieroglyphs representing the name of a monarch. Aiming to identify these drawings, the proposed method is based on several techniques freq...

The maintenance of the external fabric of historic buildings constitutes a large portion of overall building life cycle costs.Advanced reality capture and data processing technologies have the potential to transform existing survey practice,providing surveyors with objective data pertaining to building fabric, in a more rapid (frequent), safe and c...

Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) has been inserted in construction to make easier, and even automatic, a large variety of processes during the lifecycle of a building. However, RFID has some limitations and restrictions which can be highly reduced if it is combined with other sensors and technologies. This paper makes a review of the most popu...

Internationally, historic masonry buildings constitute a significant proportion of the traditional built environment. In the UK alone, there are 450,000 listed buildings and 10.6 million pre-1945 structures, a high proportion of which have been constructed in traditional masonry. The value of the historic built environment is significant and as suc...

Human body motions have been analysed for decades with a view on enhancing occupational well-being and performance of workers. On-going progresses in miniaturised wearable sensors are set to revolutionise biomechanical analysis by providing accurate and real-time quantitative motion data. The construction industry has a poor record of occupational...

This work presents a new Indoor Positioning System (IPS) based on the combination of WiFi Positioning System (WPS) and depth maps , for estimating the location of people. The combination of both technologies improves the efficiency of existing methods, based uniquely on wireless positioning techniques. While other positioning systems force users to...

Terrestrial Laser Scanning (TLS) technology is increasingly used for the generation of accurate three-dimensional (3D) models of objects and scenes. But converting the acquired 3D point cloud data into a representative, semantic 3D model of the scene requires advanced processing and skills. This research field is challenging, particularly when cons...

Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology has been widely used in the field of construction during the last two decades. Basically, RFID facilitates the control on a wide variety of processes in different stages of the lifecycle of a building, from its conception to its inhabitance. The main objective of this paper is to present a review of...

How good is a tactile sensor for tactile exploration and in-hand object localization? In this paper we propose two methods that address this question. The first approach evaluates the usefulness of tactile data from different sensors by means of a Particle Filter Localization algorithm. The second approach, using an Iterative Closed Point algorithm...

It is known that laser scanners can provide accurate, dense and raw 3D data of large scenarios but, in order to obtain a representative 3D model of the scene, such information needs to be hardly processed. This research field, named automatic construction of building models, is a challenging topic which is has been progressing over the last five ye...

This paper is focused on the automatic construction of 3D basic-semantic models of inhabited interiors using laser scanners with the help of RFID technologies. This is an innovative approach, in whose field scarce publications exist. The general strategy consists of carrying out a selective and sequential segmentation from the cloud of points by me...

RFID middleware is anticipated to one of the main research areas in the field of RFID applications in the near future. The Data EPC Acquisition System (DEPCAS) is an original proposal designed by our group to transfer and apply fundamental ideas from System and Data Acquisition (SCADA) systems into the areas of RFID acquisition, processing and dist...

In this paper we present a method that automatically yields Boundary Representation Models (B-rep) for indoors after processing dense point clouds collected by laser scanners from key locations through an existing facility. Our objective is particularly focused on providing single models which contain the shape, location and relationship of primiti...

Laser scanner data is increasingly being used for the detailed reverse engineering of buildings. This process is currently primarily manual, but recent research has shown that basic structures, such as walls, ceilings, floors, doorways, and windows, can be detected and modeled automatically. Building on this previous research, we focus on the model...

Object recognition in a 3D virtualized environment can be improved by adding additional sources of information. The involvement of several devices addressed to data acquisition allows improving the existing recognition methods by managing a smart tagged universe through ubiquitous programming. In this paper we present the building of an information...

Interacting with multimedia information stored in systems or on the web, points up several difficulties inherent in the signal nature of such information. These difficulties are especially evident when palmtop devices are used for such pur pose. Developing ...

The aim of this paper is to propose a new monocular-vision strategy for real-time positioning under augmented reality conditions. This is an important aspect to be solved in augmented reality (AR) based navigation in non-controlled environments. In this case, the position and orientation of the moving observer, who usually wears a head mounted disp...

Resumen En este trabajo se hace un acercamiento al escenario energético mundial en relación a distintos indicadores de desarrollo humano y la insostenibilidad del modelo energético. El consumo energético por habitante en los países de la OCDE llega a ser cien veces mayor respecto a los países pobres. El acceso a la energía presenta una clara relaci...