Structural damage detection and safety assessment method based on machine vision and machine learning

Abstract

Structural damage detection and health assessment are crucial for maintaining infrastructure safety and durability. This study presents a novel multi-scale vision-based framework that combines deep learning and machine learning for accurate and interpretable structural safety evaluation. Specifically, we integrate ResNet-50 and SegFormer models to jointly achieve coarse-level damage classification and fine-grained pixel-level segmentation. Seven key damage parameters are quantitatively extracted from high-resolution images—such as crack length, spalling area, and rebar exposure—and serve as interpretable features for safety assessment. A Random Forest (RF) model is developed to establish a nonlinear mapping from these visual features to structural safety levels. Experimental results demonstrate that the RF-based safety assessment model outperforms other traditional machine learning approaches, achieving an accuracy of 87.0%, F1-score of 0.76, and AUC of 0.83, highlighting its strong generalization and classification capabilities. This work offers a comprehensive and generalizable solution for automated structural damage detection and safety evaluation.