Review of unmanned aerial vehicle infrared thermography (UAV-IRT) applications in building thermal performance: towards the thermal performance evaluation of building envelope

ABSTRACT

Thermal performance assessment of building envelopes is a crucial step in building completion acceptance, insulation retrofits, energy consumption monitoring, and carbon emission reduction. Testing methods often encounter strict conditions, time-consuming procedures, and extensive labour requirements. However, the recent advancement of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) equipped with infrared thermography has paved the way for rapid and accurate thermal performance evaluation in building envelopes. This paper utilises bibliometric analysis and knowledge graph exploration to systematically examine the current research status and key issues surrounding UAV infrared thermography in building envelope thermal performance assessment. The primary emphasis is on field testing of thermal transmittance in building envelopes and thermal anomaly detection. Subsequently, the paper elaborates on instrument selection and site investigation methods, outlines the approach for flight pathway planning, emissivity, and environmental temperature, and summarises data processing and quantitative, and qualitative analysis methods.

KEYWORDS:

• Unmanned aerial vehicles
• infrared thermography
• building energy efficiency
• building envelopes
• thermal performance
• in-situ testing

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to acknowledge that this research has been funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 51778168 and No. 52278054).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Dongjie Zhang: Conceptualisation, Methodology, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Writing-review and editing. Changhong Zhan: Methodology, Writing-review and editing, Supervision. Lin Chen: Writing-review, Supervision. Yongjie Wang: Data curation. Guanghao Li: Writing-review, Supervision.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 51778168 #65307; No. 52278054]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 51778168 and No. 52278054]; National Natural Science Foundation of China [No. 51778168; No. 52278054]; Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China [No. 51778168; No. 52278054].