SwissInspect
SwissInspect is a Swiss, EPFL-born platform that turns drone and camera imagery of bridges, tunnels and buildings into quantified 3D damage maps, letting structural engineers grade concrete, masonry and steel defects and track them over time.
What is SwissInspect?
SwissInspect is an image-based infrastructure inspection service built around its own computer vision models and a web platform called PRIMA. The company was founded by engineers and academics from EPFL in Lausanne, and combines three disciplines it presents as inseparable: structural engineering, computer vision and robotics.
The principle is straightforward. Rather than sending inspectors to reach every square metre of a structure, SwissInspect photographs it — usually from a drone, sometimes with handheld cameras — and lets AI models read the imagery. Those models perform multi-class damage segmentation, separating cracks, corrosion, delamination and spalling, and localise each defect at pixel level. Crack widths are measured and every crack is classified by how wide it is. The company states its models were trained on millions of real-world images of bridges, tunnels, buildings and industrial assets, all labelled and reviewed by structural engineers, and describes the system as explainable AI by design, with an active learning framework behind it.
The output lands in PRIMA, the Platform for Reliable Inspection and Management of Assets: a web application holding what the company calls damage-augmented digital twins. Each asset carries a geo-referenced 3D model with multiple textures, a quantified 3D damage map, and full traceability back to the original inspection photographs through camera-view projection. Engineers grade damage and components, follow changes between campaigns, export through open data formats and BIM, and produce automated reports.
Three ways of buying it are offered. Full Image-based Inspection covers everything from flight planning and optimised drone paths through on-site capture by certified pilots to analysis, an expertise report and PRIMA access. Advanced Image Analysis suits organisations that already hold inspection data or intend to collect it themselves, adding consultancy on imaging strategy. PRIMA Platform is access to the software alone.
The published track record is Swiss and specific: more than eighty structures, over 200,000 m² of inspected surface and more than 400 km of cracks detected, for clients including federal and cantonal offices, railway operators and power plants. Nothing is sold self-service — there is no price, no trial and no open registration.
What it does
- Detect and segment several damage classes at once — cracks, corrosion, delamination and spalling
- Localise every defect down to the pixel and measure crack width, classifying each crack accordingly
- Build a geo-referenced 3D model of the structure and project the quantified damage map onto it
- Track how each damage instance evolves from one inspection campaign to the next
- Grade damage and components on a condition scale running from good to alarming
- Generate inspection reports automatically
- Trace any mapped defect back to the original photograph it was detected in
When to use SwissInspect / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if SwissInspect is the right fit.
When to use SwissInspect
- Structural engineers assessing the condition of bridges, viaducts and retaining walls
- Federal and cantonal infrastructure offices responsible for public assets
- Railway operators and power plant owners with ageing civil structures
- Municipal public works teams looking after urban road bridges
- Asset managers who need to track how damage evolves between inspection campaigns
When not to use SwissInspect
- Individuals or small teams wanting a self-service tool: there is no sign-up, no trial and no published price
- Buyers who need to compare costs before entering a sales conversation
- Teams looking for a mobile app or a public API to feed inspection data into their own systems
- Organisations that require published terms, a privacy policy or a DPA before onboarding a vendor
- Manufacturers after series production quality control rather than civil structure inspection
How to use SwissInspect
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Start on the Solutions page and work out which of the three engagements fits: full inspection, analysis of data you already hold, or platform access alone
- Get in touch through the contact form — full name, email address, company and a message capped at 180 characters — or by email
- Ask for a PRIMA demonstration, which is how the company invites prospective customers to see the platform
- For a full inspection, SwissInspect plans the data acquisition and optimises drone flight paths around the structure's geometry
- Certified pilots capture the imagery on site; where drones do not suit the setting, an alternative imaging approach is used instead
- If you already hold inspection data, the Advanced Image Analysis route begins with consultancy on your imaging strategy
- The AI analyses the imagery, segmenting and quantifying the damage, and the findings are consolidated into an expertise or technical report
- Log in to PRIMA and create the asset, recording its name, identifier, type, latitude and longitude, dimensions, construction year, material, owner and administrator
- Import the inspection campaign against that asset, then browse results by inspection date
- Explore the 3D model and damage map, drill back to the source photographs, and assign condition grades from CE1 (good condition) to CE5 (alarming condition)
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Genuinely specialised in civil structures rather than a general-purpose vision tool, with training images labelled and reviewed by structural engineers
- Every mapped defect can be traced back to the inspection photograph it came from
- Working resolutions are published and checkable: 0.15 to 0.20 mm per pixel on retaining walls, 0.3 mm per pixel on a viaduct, cracks above 0.2 mm detected on a concrete abutment
- Named, verifiable public references — Services Industriels de Genève, SBB, the city of Lausanne, Kanton Zürich and ASTRA
- Longitudinal monitoring is demonstrated rather than merely claimed: two campaigns in 2022 and 2023 on the same steel truss, with detection uncertainty taken into account
- Inspection achieved without interrupting rail traffic or hiring an aerial lift, cutting both risk and cost
- Three levels of engagement, from a fully managed inspection to platform access on its own
Cons
- No public pricing of any kind, and neither a free plan nor a trial is announced — evaluating the tool means running a full sales cycle
- No terms and conditions, no privacy policy, no legal notice and no data processing agreement are published anywhere
- Nothing is stated about where data is hosted, how long it is kept, or which subprocessors are involved
- No security certification is claimed; the certified pilots mentioned are drone pilots, not a company credential
- No public API and no mobile application — PRIMA is a web application only
- PRIMA's interface exists in English alone, while the marketing site is published in English, French and German
- Every published reference is Swiss, so there is no public evidence of deployment outside Switzerland
Pricing & Plans
SwissInspect publishes no prices. There is no pricing page, and no amount appears anywhere across the site's fifteen indexed URLs. The three offerings — Full Image-based Inspection, Advanced Image Analysis and PRIMA Platform — are presented as packages without a rate card, and the Solutions page closes by inviting prospective customers to contact the team for personalised guidance. No permanent free plan is announced and no free trial is announced; neither is explicitly ruled out either. Pricing is therefore established on quotation, and no entry-level amount can be stated.
- Full Image-based Inspection — data acquisition planning with optimised drone paths
- on-site collection by certified pilots
- advanced image analysis
- expertise report and PRIMA access. Price on request.
- Advanced Image Analysis — consultancy on optimal imaging strategies
- state-of-the-art image analysis
- technical report and PRIMA access
- for organisations that already hold or will collect their own data. Price on request.
- PRIMA Platform — access to the platform alone
- with geo-referenced 3D models
- quantified 3D damage mapping
- camera-view image projection and damage and component grading. Price on request.
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how SwissInspect handles your data.
GDPR overview
There is no mention of the GDPR anywhere on this site, and the absence is established rather than merely unobserved: the complete sitemap lists fifteen URLs, the site's own llms.txt lists eleven pages, and the usual legal paths return genuine 404 responses on both swissinspect.io and the PRIMA application. No privacy policy, no terms, no legal notice and no consent banner exist; the only cookie set is Polylang's language cookie. No data protection officer is named and no Article 27 EU representative is designated, the sole published address being a general enquiries mailbox. SwissInspect Sàrl is established in Renens, Switzerland, outside the European Union, so Swiss data protection law applies by default — but the site does not say that either.
Who owns the data?
SwissInspect publishes no terms and conditions, no privacy policy and no legal notice. The full sitemap, the site's own llms.txt index and direct probes of the usual legal paths on both the marketing site and the PRIMA application all confirm the absence. Nothing public therefore states who owns the inspection imagery, the geo-referenced 3D models or the damage data held in PRIMA, what SwissInspect may do with them, or with whom they may be shared. The only adjacent element is the company's statutory purpose at the Swiss commercial register, which mentions the provision of data storage services — a corporate object, not a commitment towards customers. Ownership has to be settled contractually, in writing, before any campaign starts.
Reuse rights
Because no terms and conditions exist anywhere on the site, there is no public rule saying whether customers may reuse, republish or pass on what an inspection produces: the 3D models, the damage maps, the crack measurements or the generated reports. The site does advertise open data formats and BIM integration for PRIMA, which suggests results can be taken out of the platform, but it documents neither the formats themselves nor any reversibility procedure. Any right of reuse, and any restriction on it, would have to be negotiated directly with SwissInspect.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
No hosting information is published. The site names no country, no region, no jurisdiction and no subprocessor, and there is no privacy policy or terms page in which such a statement could appear. Two technical observations can be made, and neither is a commitment by the vendor: the marketing site resolves to an Infomaniak address in Geneva, Switzerland, and the PRIMA application is served through Amazon CloudFront. Reading either as a declaration of where customer inspection data lives would be an inference the company has never made. What is documented is the corporate object recorded at the Swiss commercial register, which includes the provision of data storage services. SwissInspect Sàrl is established in Switzerland, outside the European Union, so Swiss data protection law applies by default rather than the GDPR, though the site does not say so. Organisations with data residency requirements should treat hosting as an open question to be settled contractually.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting SwissInspect.
- No contractual documentation at all: without terms or a privacy policy, ownership of your inspection imagery, 3D models and damage data is undefined in public
- The company says its models learn from millions of real-world images and runs an active learning framework, but never states whether customer data feeds that training or how to opt out
- No hosting country, region or subprocessor is declared, which matters for condition data on bridges and railway assets
- A condition grade produced with AI assistance remains an engineering decision; no detection rate, false-negative figure or validation protocol is published to back the explainability claim
- Undetected damage on a bridge or a retaining wall has physical consequences — the tool documents observed condition, it does not replace the engineer's judgement or liability
- Digital twins and campaign history live inside PRIMA; open data formats are advertised, but no reversibility procedure is documented
- The site never publishes a legal company name: SwissInspect Sàrl comes from the Swiss commercial register, not from the site itself
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for the customer. PRIMA is a browser-based application with accounts and member management: nothing to install, no API to integrate and no connector to configure. The real effort sits in the inspection campaign rather than the software. With the full offering, SwissInspect handles flight planning and on-site capture with certified pilots, so the client's technical load stays minimal. The Advanced Image Analysis route shifts more onto the customer, who supplies or collects the imagery with SwissInspect advising on strategy. No public technical documentation exists, so onboarding depends entirely on the vendor.
Deployment
Supported languages
Behind SwissInspect
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What does SwissInspect actually do?
What is PRIMA?
Which types of damage can the AI detect?
Is a drone always required?
How much does it cost?
Is there a free trial or a free plan?
Is there an API or a mobile app?
How is data handled and where is it hosted?
Who is behind the tool?
How much experience does the company have?
Should you pick SwissInspect?
SwissInspect is a narrow, credible tool rather than a broad one. Its value comes less from the AI alone than from the chain it sits in: planned image capture, models trained specifically on civil structures and reviewed by structural engineers, and a platform that keeps every mapped defect tied to the photograph it came from. The published record supports the claim — more than eighty structures, named public clients including ASTRA, SBB, Kanton Zürich and the city of Lausanne, working resolutions given in millimetres per pixel, and at least one asset followed across two campaigns a year apart.
The reservations are commercial and contractual rather than technical. Nothing is priced, nothing can be tried, and the whole evaluation runs through a sales conversation. More importantly, the site publishes no terms and conditions, no privacy policy and no data processing agreement, and says nothing about where inspection data is hosted or how long it is kept. For a platform holding condition data on bridges and railway infrastructure, that silence is worth raising early. The company also describes an active learning framework without saying whether customer imagery feeds it.
It suits organisations that own civil infrastructure and buy inspection by project: public works departments, cantonal and federal offices, railway and energy asset owners, and the engineering firms advising them. It will frustrate anyone hoping to try software before speaking to a vendor.
SwissInspect Sàrl is young and small — registered in June 2021, with capital of CHF 20,000 — but visibly active, having moved its seat in 2026 and admitted new partners in 2025. Treat the technology as proven on Swiss infrastructure, and the commercial and legal terms as entirely still to be negotiated.
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