Guest Editorial: Data Fusion, integration and advances of non-destructive testing methods in civil and environmental engineering

Use of non-destructive testing (NDT) methods has tremendously increased over the last decades in a wide range of civil and environmental engineering applications. Research on stand-alone use of electric, electromagnetic, optical and acoustic NDT techniques has rapidly progressed and potentials of these methods have been comprehensively explored and evaluated, making the majority of techniques established in many areas of endeavour. Research focus areas have been mostly on developing new theories, the advancement of hardware and software components, and on introducing novel surveying protocols, data processing and interpretation methods. Accordingly, the standard of quality and accuracy of data has reached very high levels with available technology. Parallel to this, the integration between sensing technologies, in terms of collecting and modelling multi-source, multi-scale and multi-temporal data, has become a very challenging task in research. This concept is in fact being acknowledged as a fundamental area of research development that could highly contribute towards the enhancement of the capabilities of existing NDT methods in new and non-conventional scenarios. This trend is motivated by the need to provide more effective solutions for the investigation of complex scenarios. At the same time, a balance among project costs and time requirements on one hand, and resource management-related constraints due to the involvement of multiple methods, equipment and interdisciplinary expertise in the other, must be maintained.