Francesco Nex

Papers

Total Citations

509

H-Index

About

Francesco Nex is a prominent researcher specializing in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), remote sensing, geomatics, and structural damage assessment. His work sits at the intersection of aerial survey technology, computer vision, and disaster response, making significant contributions to how researchers and practitioners deploy UAVs for real-world applications. Nex's most influential contribution, "UAV in the Advent of the Twenties" (2022, 285 citations), provides a comprehensive state-of-the-art review of UAV development across geoscience, remote sensing, and engineering, establishing best practices for the field's future directions. Equally impactful is his 2019 review on UAV-based structural damage mapping (204 citations), which synthesized how unmanned platforms equipped with active and passive sensors can revolutionize disaster assessment and infrastructure monitoring — a challenge central to emergency response worldwide. Beyond reviews, Nex has helped shape the scientific community itself through his involvement with UAV-g, an established conference series dedicated to advancing UAV applications in geomatics. More recently, his work on MONO-HYDRA explores real-time 3D scene graph construction from monocular cameras and IMU data, pushing boundaries in autonomous robot navigation and semantic spatial understanding. Across these contributions, Nex has established himself as a leading voice guiding UAV research from foundational surveys to cutting-edge autonomous systems.