Rapid Post-Earthquake Structural Damage Assessment Using Convolutional Neural Networks and Transfer Learning

The adoption of artificial intelligence in post-earthquake inspections and reconnaissance has received considerable attention in recent years, owing to its exponential increase in computation capabilities and inherent potential in addressing disadvantages associated with manual in-spections. Herein, we present the effectiveness of automated deep learning in enhancing the assessment of damage caused by the 2017 Pohang earthquake. Six classical pre-trained convolutional neural network (CNN) models are implemented through transfer learning (TL) on a small dataset, comprising 1780 manually labeled images of structural damage. Feature extraction and fine-tuning TL methods are trained on the image datasets. The performances of various CNN models are compared on a testing image dataset. Results confirm that the MobileNet fine-tuned model offers the best performance. Therefore, the model is further developed as a web-based application for classifying earthquake damage. The severity of damage is quantified by assigning damage assessment values, derived using the CNN model and gradient-weighted class activation mapping. The web-based application can effectively and automatically classify structural damage resulting from earthquakes, rendering it suitable for decision making, such as in resource allocation, policy development, and emergency response.