An Analysis of Drone-based Structural Health Monitoring and New Technologies

The growing urgency for sustainable and intelligent infrastructure has fuelled the evolution of real-time Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) systems. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) offer a transformative "fly-by" SHM approach, capturing high resolution data from difficult to access structures. This study presents a concise review that integrates scientometric and systematic literature analyses to examine trends, technologies, and research gaps in UAV-enabled SHM. It identifies four core research themes: (1) vision-based UAV monitoring; (2) sensor and AI integration; (3) comprehensive SHM frameworks; and (4) autonomous UAV inspection systems. Key challenges and directions for future research are also discussed.