Terrestrial Laser Scanning for Deformation Monitoring of Civil Engineering Structures and Tunnels: A Review
Keywords:
Point cloud change detection, Structural health monitoring, Registration error, Tunnel convergence, Sensor fusionAbstract
Terrestrial laser scanning (TLS) is an established non-contact technique for capturing dense, millimetre-accurate three-dimensional point clouds, and its use for deformation monitoring has expanded rapidly over the last two decades. This review focuses on the two application domains with the most demanding accuracy requirements: structural health monitoring of above-ground civil engineering structures (buildings, bridges and retaining walls) and deformation monitoring of tunnels. Literature published mainly between 2017 and 2025 is synthesised to describe the point-cloud change-detection strategies used to derive deformation from repeat scans (point-to-point, cloud-to-cloud, cloud-to-mesh and multiscale model-to-model cloud comparison, M3C2) and the main error sources that limit deformation-grade accuracy. Reported case studies show that, under controlled scanning geometry and registration, TLS can resolve structural and tunnel-lining displacements at the millimetre to sub-centimetre level, competitive with total-station and levelling networks while offering full-field rather than discrete-point coverage. Turkish research groups have contributed actively to terrestrial and mobile laser scanning for documentation and deformation studies. Persistent challenges are registration-error propagation, sensitivity to incidence angle and environmental conditions, and the lack of a standardised accuracy-verification procedure. Permanent and mobile scanning, automated point-cloud processing and sensor fusion with fibre-optic and satellite-radar techniques are the most promising directions.
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