Our partner CDEI-UPC Centre de Disseny d’Equips Industrials have carried out a series of field campaigns to expand the datasets used for the characterization and identification of construction materials and hidden structural elements.

Researchers Berta Viñes Santamaria, Tahzeeb Hussain, Haowei Xu, and Nuria Rodríguez Calderón collected new data using Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and hyperspectral imaging technologies. These activities support the development of advanced methods for detecting and interpreting construction materials and structural features that are not visible during standard building inspections.

One of the campaigns took place at HERCAL’s demolition site of the former La Vanguardia building in Barcelona, where the team collected GPR and hyperspectral measurements and gained direct insight into demolition processes through exchanges with site managers and construction inspectors.

A second campaign was carried out at CODA Computational Design Affairs, an architecture and engineering agency linked to the School of Architecture at Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya. During this visit, additional data were acquired from different construction materials, with a particular focus on wood structures, further enriching the project’s training datasets.

The collected data have contributed to advances in hyperbola detection algorithms, an important step towards identifying hidden structural elements behind walls and improving the automated interpretation of GPR data.

These activities contribute to DISCOVER’s broader objective of supporting more accurate building assessment, improved demolition planning, and increased recovery and reuse of construction materials.