A standard residential property in suburban Brisbane has a house and maybe a garage. Two structures, two roof areas, straightforward inspection scope. But move 30 kilometres west to acreage properties in the Lockyer Valley, and the picture changes dramatically.
A typical acreage property might include: the main residence, a detached garage, a machinery shed, a hay barn, a carport, a covered entertaining area, a granny flat, and a water tank stand with a roof over it. Eight roofed structures, each with different materials, different pitches, different ages, and different damage profiles.
Why most tools fail at multi-structure
The majority of inspection software treats 'the property' as a single entity. There is one report, one set of photos, one damage summary. When an assessor inspects a property with 6 or 8 structures, they are forced to either: create separate reports for each structure (multiplying their admin time by the number of structures), or cram everything into a single report and hope the insurer can make sense of it.
Neither approach works well. Separate reports mean separate uploads, separate formatting passes, and a high risk of cross-contamination, the wrong photo ending up in the wrong report, measurements attributed to the wrong structure. A single combined report becomes a 40-page document where the insurer has to work out which findings relate to which structure.
The problem is structural, not cosmetic. Insurance claims are scoped per structure. The main residence might be insured under the building policy, the shed under a separate farm structures policy, and the granny flat under a third policy. The assessor needs to produce evidence that is attributable to each specific structure, not a bulk summary of 'the property.'
The ARIS approach: sections as structures
ARIS Detect uses a section-based architecture where each structure on a property is defined as a separate section within a single inspection. The assessor creates the inspection once, adds sections for each structure (Main Residence, Detached Garage, Machinery Shed, etc.), and then assigns imagery and findings to the appropriate section.
This is not a folder system. Each section carries its own metadata, roof material, pitch, approximate area, age, construction type, and produces its own damage summary, detection pass, and measurement set. When the report is generated, findings are grouped by section with clear structural attribution.
For the insurer, this means receiving a single report that contains clearly delineated evidence for each structure. For the assessor, it means managing one inspection with one upload rather than fragmenting the work across multiple separate jobs.
Real-world complexity
The section model becomes essential for properties where structures share boundaries or where damage patterns cross multiple structures. Consider a hailstorm that hits an acreage property: the main house and the adjacent carport share a gutter line. Damage to the gutter could be attributed to either structure depending on how the claim is scoped.
With separate reports, this kind of boundary damage is either duplicated (counted in both reports) or attributed arbitrarily (whichever report the assessor happened to be working on when they photographed it). With ARIS sections, the assessor can assign the finding to the appropriate structure, or flag it for the insurer to determine allocation.
Similarly, satellite overlay imagery (where the drone capture is overlaid on a satellite or aerial map) needs to show all structures in context. A section-based architecture allows the assessor to toggle between structures on the same map view, seeing how damage patterns relate to the overall property layout.
Scale under pressure
Multi-structure properties become a crisis during catastrophe events. A single hailstorm across the Darling Downs can generate claims on thousands of rural properties, many with 4 to 8 structures each. If each structure requires its own inspection workflow, the backlog multiplies by the average structure count, turning a 2,000-claim event into an 8,000-workflow event.
ARIS Detect's section model keeps the workflow count equal to the property count, not the structure count. The assessor processes the entire property as a single inspection, the AI runs detection across all sections, and the report covers everything. During the March 2025 Toowoomba hailstorm, assessor teams using ARIS completed multi-structure inspections in an average of 18 minutes per property, compared to the 90+ minutes reported by teams using traditional per-structure workflows.
What this means for your workflow
If your inspection operations primarily cover standard suburban residential properties, single house, single garage, the multi-structure capability is a convenience. If your operations cover any of the following, it is essential:
Rural and semi-rural properties with multiple outbuildings. Strata complexes where individual lot inspections need to reference shared structures. Commercial properties with multiple roof areas at different heights or pitches. Body corporate inspections covering entire residential complexes. Mining and agricultural operations with infrastructure spread across large sites.
The common thread is that the property is not the same as the structure, and the inspection workflow needs to handle that distinction natively rather than forcing it through workarounds.
Building for the edge case
When we designed the section architecture, the temptation was to optimise for the common case, the suburban house with one roof. But the common case is easy. Any tool can handle a single-structure inspection adequately. The value of a purpose-built platform shows when the property is complex, the structures are numerous, and the stakes are high.
Every insurer we work with has a segment of their portfolio that involves multi-structure properties. For some, it is 5% of claims. For rural insurers, it can be 40% or more. Building the platform to handle the complex case well, and letting the simple case benefit from the same architecture, was a deliberate design decision that has paid off consistently.
ARIS Detect Team
Engineering