App4SHM vs Visual Displacement Meter

App4SHM is a smartphone application for structural health monitoring (SHM) of bridges or other civil structures to assess their condition after a catastrophic event or when required by authorities and stakeholders. The application interrogates the phone’s internal accelerometer to measure structural accelerations and applies artificial intelligence techniques to detect damage in almost real time. App4SHM resulted from academic research developed at Lusófona University, in particular the Civil Research Group and the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Systems.

The visual displacement meter is a high-precision visual measurement device used to measure surface displacement changes of structures, with a measurement accuracy of up to sub-millimeter levels and a maximum measurement distance of hundreds of meters. It can be used for deformation monitoring and detection of critical infrastructure such as bridges, tunnels, subways, slopes, and dams.