Work

Serverless 3D Reconstruction and Spatial Anchoring for Cloud-Native Infrastructure Inspection

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: While infrastructure asset management increasingly relies on high-resolution drone imagery, existing workflows suffer from fragmented information management and dependence on costly local processing infrastructure. This paper addresses these limitations by using a cloud-native spatial intelligence hub that converts raw inspection imagery into an interactive and queryable three-dimensional information layer. The system integrates a timeout-resilient orchestration layer for photogrammetry pipelines, a multi-user three-dimensional environment for collaborative review, and a PostGIS-backed spatial database that stores defects as georeferenced anchors. We further introduce a spatial anchoring workflow mapping three-dimensional interactions to world coordinates, retrieving context-relevant images via frustum-based visibility scoring. Evaluated on real inspection datasets, the serverless architecture achieved end-to-end reconstruction in under one hour with sub-25 ms query latency. Results indicate that acquisition geometry, particularly oblique convergent viewpoints, is a stronger predictor of reconstruction complexity than image count. This work establishes a reproducible reference architecture, enabling a transition from file-centric documentation to traceable, spatially indexed evidence management for infrastructure Digital Twins.

Source: Buildings

DOI: 10.3390/buildings16122433

Authors: Youssef Arhrib, Flor Alvarez-Taboada, Hakim Boulaassal

Institutions: Abdelmalek Essaâdi University, Universidad de León

Language: English

Topic: 3D Surveying and Cultural Heritage

Subfield: Geology

Field: Earth and Planetary Sciences

Domain: Physical Sciences

SDG: Industry, innovation and infrastructure

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $3,137