Enhancement of a Power Line Information System by Combining BIM and LiDAR Data

Sammanfattning: With the great ongoing energy transition in Sweden, Svenska Kraftnät (SVK) sees a huge need for investment in the Swedish transmission network and supporting IT- systems.  SVK has a great amount of collected laser data over the electric power transmission network however this data does not contain any semantic attribution that can be analyzed on broader information systems. The overall focus of this thesis is to investigate ways to enhance an information system. This thesis focuses particularly on the ability to combine information from pylon-3D-BIM models with point clouds of pylons gathered via an airborne laser scanner. Point cloud data from a 200-kilometer-long power line corridor between Djurmo and Lindbacka, including pylons, was provided by SVK. Two different methods to compile different data types to a single information system are investigated in this thesis. The first method is established by matching different types of pylon 3D-models to the respective reference point clouds using the Iterative Closest Point algorithm (ICP). The pylon models used for this method were S1J, B1J and SV2J pylons.The second method is based on segmentation of meaningful pylon parts from the point cloud data using predefined information about the shape of the pylons. The pylon models used for this method were S1J and B1J pylons. The goal was to automate the process and extract information as well as perform computations dynamically. This has been done using Feature Manipulation Engine (FME). The results are evaluated by comparing the two methods based on performance, reliability, and purpose. 93 % of the ICP comparisons showed that the best match between a point cloud model and a 3D-model was achieved when comparing models of the same pylon type. The highest accuracy was achieved when comparing an S1J pylon point cloud to an S1J pylon 3D-model.The segmentation method was used to successfully segment the beam, insulators and legs from the pylon point cloud data. A small sample size of pylon point clouds as well as a low number of different pylon 3D-models were used but both methods can be seen as a proof of concept that could be further evaluated in the future. In conclusion both methods used in this project were used successfully in order to enhance a power line information system.