Between the Poles

ROI of up to $21 per dollar invested in improving accuracy of geolocation of underground utilities

I blogged recently about a remarkable effort by the City of Las Vegas to create an accurate 3D model of the underground infrastructure of the city.  An important question is what are the quantified benefits of improving the reliability of the geolocation and condition information about underground utilities ?  As part of an effort in Australia to improve the reliability of information about underground utilities, the standards committee investigated the available evidence for quantified benefits.

Australia Subsurface Utility Engineering Information Standard

In May 2010, Standards Australia Committee IT-036, Subsurface Utility Engineering Information began developing a new Australian Standard, AS 5488—201X, Classification of Subsurface Utility Information (SUI).

The motivation for this standards effort was the lack of reliable information during design and construction activities that can result in costly conflicts, delays, utility service disruptions, redesigns, personal injuries to workers, and even lost lives.  The fundamental problem is that the location of subsurface utilities often appears on design plans, but they are based on notoriously unreliable as-builts.

To address this issue Standards Australia (SA) began developing an Australian Standard for the practice of Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE).  SUE is an engineering process that combines civil engineering, geophysics, survey and CADD/GIS and provides much more accurate information on the location and condition of subsurface utilities than has been traditionally available.

As part of this effort SA committee researched the quantifiable benefits attributable to SUE.  They found three studies that attempted to quantify the return on investment in improving the quality of subsurface utility data, including location and condition of assets.

USDOT - ROI of $4.62 per $1.00 invested

According to a USDOT sponsored survey conducted by Purdue University in 1999 (Cost Savings on Highway Projects Utilizing Subsurface Utility Engineering), two broad categories of savings emerged from using SUE — quantifiable and qualitative savings. The Purdue study quantified a total of US$4.62 in avoided costs for every US$1.00 spent on SUE. Although qualitative savings (for example, avoided impacts on nearby homes and businesses) were not directly measurable, the researchers believed those savings were significant, and arguably many times more valuable than the quantifiable savings.

Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association - ROI of $3.41 per $1.00 invested

In 2004 in Canada, the Ontario Sewer and Watermain Contractors Association commissioned the University of Toronto to investigate the practice of using SUE on large infrastructure projects in Ontario. This study, entitled Subsurface Utility Engineering in Ontario: Challenges and Opportunities, determined that the average rate of return for each dollar spent on SUE services on those projects that could be quantified was $3.41.

Pennsylvania DOT - ROI of $21.00 per $1.00 invested

In 2007, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation commissioned Pennsylvania State University to study the savings on Pennsylvania highway projects that used SUE in accordance with the mapping provisions of the American standard. In their unpublished report, Subsurface Utility Engineering Manual, Pennsylvania State University found a return on investment of US$21.00 saved for every US$1.00 spent for SUE when elevating the quality level of subsurface utility information using SUE. This significantly higher return on investment when compared to Purdue and Toronto studies is thought to be a result of maturation of process and possibly a consideration of the qualitative savings noted above.

Image courtesy of VTN Consulting.

Convergence of geospatial and building information modeling (BIM) accelerates

About a decade ago Dave Sonnen, Global Analyst for Spatial Information at IDC, projected that the locationaware market for geospatial services would exceed the traditional GIS market in 2005/2006. The release of Google Earth in June 2005 transformed the geospatial services ecosystem. Today, location-aware technologies have blown past the traditional GIS space in terms of number of users and number of deployed apps.

In sectors such as construction, transportation, utilities and municipal infrastructure, geospatial services are playing an increasingly important role even though it is often not obvious. At a recent Distributech conference, the largest electric power distribution conference in North America, of the 400-plus presentations, only a handful mentioned GIS or geospatial in their title or abstract. But of the 18 companies that we interacted with, only two said they were not using geospatial technology in the organisation. Even those that said they weren't using GIS, were in all probability using Google Maps for market analysis, recruitment or other applications.

To put this in context, the annual global construction spend is estimated to be $7 trillion, about 10% of world GDP. Of this, transportation construction accounts for $1 trillion, utilities $2 trillion, and buildings $2.5 trillion. It has been estimated that between 2013 and 2030, $57 trillion in infrastructure investment will be required simply to keep up with projected global GDP growth. Th is includes investment required for transport (road, rail, ports, airports), power, water, and telecommunications. This is nearly 60% more than the $36 trillion spent globally on infrastructure over the past 18 years.

Over half of the world's 7-billion population lives in cities and this is expected to increase as we move toward 9 billion by 2050. In the future, it is projected that there will be many more and larger mega cities like Tokyo, Mumbai, Mexico City, and Moscow. Cities around the world are beginning to realise that the power that lights up their homes and offi ces comes from the convergence of modern information technology, including BIM, geospatial/ GIS, intelligent (connected) network models for electric power, telecommunications, water and wastewater, transportation, and other infrastructure, real-time data management systems, and 3D visualisation.

Buildings use about 40% of global energy, 25% of global water, 40% of global resources, and they emit approximately one-third of global GHG emissions. Faced with rising environmental issues, many governments are mandating energy conservation measures, especially targeting near-zero energy buildings, an industry that is projected to grow by 43% per year to reach $690 billion by 2020.

Building information modeling (BIM) and geospatial technology have central roles to play in improving the energy efficiency of buildings. Several years ago, in an awardwinning paper at a conference organised by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, the design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial — or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century.  The need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction for some time now and government mandated energy efficiency for buildings is a major driver of BIM/geospatial convergence.

Construction, power, transportation and municipal infrastructure are important sectors of the world economy. Over the next two decades these will see a massive infusion of investment, motivated by economic development and environmental concerns. In addition, as governments find they have less and less money for capital infrastructure projects, a greater proportion of the investment in infrastructure will come from the private sector, which will drive an increased focus on productivity to improve returns on investment. Th at in turn is driving a transformation of the construction industry which is reflected in accelerating adoption of integrated BIM, geospatial, and 3D visualisation, geospatially enabled data management, and vertical applications based on these technologies.

Excerpted from a recent article. 

Graphics courtesy of e7 Architecture Studio and VNT Consulting.

Infrastructure excellence competition

Infrastructure-excellence.com is hosting the second annual competition showcasing Excellence in Infrastructure— highlighting the best projects done in 2012/2013. The winners will be given over US$10,000 in prizes by the competition sponsors.  The competition is open to anyone 21 years and older who is planning, designing, building, and managing infrastructure projects.  Project types may include the following:

• Transportation (roads and highways, rail, airports, or bridges)
• Land development (commercial sites, subdivisions, public parks, or recreation)
• Water (distribution, water resources, dams and levees, or wastewater)
• Energy (electric and gas distribution, electric transmission, and substation design)
• Urban planning

GITA ANZ: Standards for underground utility data

As I have blogged about previously, one of the most difficult things to do in many parts of the world if to find reliable data about underground assets, utility networks such as water and waste water, power, gas, oil, and steam telecommunications including copper, fibre, and coax.  When I was in Penang, Malayia I encountered an interesting approach for mapping and maintaining a database of underground facilities that is unlike anything I have seen elsewhere.  It's called Sutra D'Bank (PENANG STATE GOVERNMENT SUBTERRANEAN DATA BANK) and is maintained by a joint venture company EQUARATER (PENANG) SDN BHD (EPSB) formed by Equarater Sdn Bhd and the Penang Development Corporation.

At the GITA ANZ conference in Melbourne, Bruce Potter of Cardno gave an overview of the progress toward defining an Australian standard for classifying the reliability underground utility data.  Their research has identified several international standards in other countries around the world including the UK, US, Canada, Malaysia, and Japan.

The Australian standard is intended to build on the ASCE 38-02 standard including the A, B, C, and D Quality Levels, but extend it to include

• 3D spatial accuracy as part of Quality Level A
• Metadata about the nature of the facility, its condition and status.

ASCE 38-02 - Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data

Published in 2002, this standard is intended to standardize the classification of the quality of location information about existing subsurface utility networks included on engineering drawings.  The standard defines four quality levels:

• D – Information derived from existing records or oral recollections.
• C – Information obtained by surveying and plotting visible above-ground utility features and by using professional judgment in correlating this information to Quality Level D.
• B – Information obtained through the application of appropriate surface geophysical methods to determine the existence and approximate horizontal position of subsurface utilities.
• A – Precise horizontal and vertical location of utilities obtained by the actual exposure and subsequent measurement of subsurface utilities, usually at a specific point.

Classifying the quality of data about underground utility networks reduces risk and allows engineers to make decisions about remedial measures to gather accurate location data for underground facilities.  When underground facilities are unexpectedly encountered during construction, there is the potential for catastrophic results.

This stantard has been endorsed by both AASHTO (A Guide for Accommodating Utilities Within Highway Right-of-Way) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA).

San Bruno explosion inquiry points to flawed GIS information

Flawed information flows affect safety

One of the major challenges facing the world's utilities is one of data management, optimizng information flows that involve multiple divisions within a utility. I have blogged about this challenge on multiple occasions (here, here, here and here).  This process needs to be optimized otherwise the quality of the information ("records") about the utility's overhead and underground infrastructure, where it is located and its maintenance history, is impaired, potentially leading to serious accidents like the gas explosions in Belgium in 2004 and the San Bruno explosion in 2010.

The basic process for designing, building and operating and maintaining a utilities network is essentially the same the world over and involves a cumbersome, inefficient, paper-based process.  Designers or planners create the initial design, called a construction drawing. Construction crews, often comprised of sub-contractors, build the facilities using paper construction drawings.  During construction, the drawing may be marked up or redlined to reflect changes in the original design.  After construction is completed, the construction drawing, now referred to as an "as-built", is forwarded to the records department.  The records department typically redrafts the paper as-built into the permanent records database, which is maintained as the company's record of its network infrastructure.

For work relating to connecting or disconnecting customers to the network, adding new services, repairing or replacing network facilities, and call-before-you-dig requests the records department is responsible for preparing maps showing the location of the utility's network facilities to assist field staff.  

The symptoms associated with a flawed process for managing records are as-built backlogs stretching from months to years, resulting in out-of-date data, and poor communication between the field and records staff, resulting in inaccurate data about network facilities in the records data base .  Inaccurate and out-of-date records not only reduce the productivity of field staff, but impact the safety of utility workers and the public, the primary concern of all gas and electric utilities.

San Bruno explosion

In the San Francisco Chronicle it was reported that "Federal investigators had determined that a major factor in the San Bruno explosion was PG&E's ignorance that its pipe had a seam running down the length of the line, which ruptured at an incomplete weld in San Bruno on Sept. 9, 2010.  Such a seam would have been noted on an accurate geographic information system report, and if it had, PG&E would have been legally obligated to prove it was in good condition."

Yesterday a utility company engineer testified that he "repeatedly told his bosses the company was relying on flawed data to vouch for the safety of its gas transmission lines before the San Bruno disaster, but that the utility took no steps to fix the problem."  He said that gas-system managers had ignored his and other employees' concerns that the company was relying on incomplete and inaccurate records contained in its geographic information system.

Optimizing information flow problem

The important conclusion here is that installing a GIS does not solve the fundamental problem, which is an information flow problem.  The most critical business process improvement is ensuring a digital information flow, pre-posting digital CAD designs directly into the records database, rather than redrafting the information from paper as-builts.  The second most important process improvement is proving a direct wireless link for field staff enabling them to participate directly in ensuring the quality of the records database. 

Heathrow Airport is an example where there is a lot of underground infrastructure, and it is an environment where even a minor accident carries the risk of serious consequences.  Heathrow has developed work processes around a data management system which ensures web-based access to high quality information about Heathrow's infrastructure.  At Heathrow standards, guidelines, and work processes are designed to ensure reliable data.  The most critical business benefit is safety.  Other benefits of Heathrow's apporach are that it minimizes rework, increases re-use of designs and provides for efficient handover for engineering designs from design to construction to operations. 

The direct benefits of business process improvement are eliminating the as-built backlog, with the important benefit that the records database is uptodate, and accurate data, because the entire field staff is participating in maintaining data quality.  Reliable data reduces the risk of accidents like Sana Bruno.  It also improves efficiency and productivity.  As utilities move to the new world of smart grid, or intelligent networks, reliable data about the network has become even more essential.

Using BIM for infrastructure to improve urban aerial and underground facility records

One of the major hazards of all construction activity is inadvertently hitting underground infrastructure.  To give some idea of how frequent this occurs, in the US in 2010 there were 112,917 incidents where underground utility facilities were hit during excavation.

I've blogged recently about what Heathrow has done to design business processes to optimize data quality.  For example, contractors at Heathrow are contractually obligated to progressively deliver as-builts over the lifetime of construction projects. 

One of the major challenges facing municipal governments and utilities is one of data management, optimizing information flows for engineering data. I have blogged about this challenge on multiple occasions (here, here, here and here).

A recent article outlines what the City of Las Vegas has done to address this challenge.  The city decided to develop a 3D model of above- and below-ground infrastructure in Las Vegas’s core downtown area.   They wanted a living 3D model of the city's existing infrastructure, not an archive, that they could rely on to be an accurate and up-to-date source of information for planning, designing, and maintenance.

The city turned to VTN Consulting for help building the 3D model because VTN has been a longtime proponent of developing 3D city models based on an approach called building information modeling (BIM) for infrastructure.  The city model that VTN designed for Las Vegas blends engineering design drawings, geographic information system (GIS) data from a variety of sources and file formats, and aerial photogrammetry.  As the team brought GIS and design data provided by the city together with aerial photos to build the framework for the model. The aerial photographs provide a wealth of information about conditions and buildings above ground, and serve as a point of reference for underground infrastructure. They are now bringing in underground utility information.  Some of this information is quite old and may often not reflect existing conditions.  They’re using American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)  standards to rank the quality of subsurface utility data on a scale of A to D, with ‘A’ being survey accurate to ‘D’ denoting data from unverified records or oral recollections.

They have focused on optimizing their business processes for updating data about their existing facilities and adding new facilities so that over time data quality will improve.  In particular they have ensured that there is tight integration between the engineering design environment and the city model.  Engineers can easily not only integrate city model data into their designs at the beginning of projects, but also add their designs to the city model at the completion of projects.  One of the major benefits of integrating the city model into the design process is that it enables them to avoid interferences, often called clashes, with existing underground infrastructure during the design phase.

The BIM for infrastructure approach not only makes it easier to spot and address interferences in designs before construction begins, it also helps to improve communication with nontechnical stakeholders including the public.  3D visualizations are more intuitive especially for nontechnical people, whereas 2D drawings and maps require explanation.  A 3D model can help win support for a project. A photorealistic rendering of a project is much more effective in conveying the benefits of a project, for example, in not creating an eyesore or even making the city more visually appealing.  For a city like Las Vegas that lives from tourism this is a top priority for any project.

Geospatial World Forum: Unlocking quality asset information at Heathrow

Airports are like cities.  They have all the infrastructure that cities have plus some.  Heathrow is the busiest airport in Europe with on average 181,000 passengers passing through it each day.  Heathrow has 13 different types of infrastructure, some of which are unique to the airport environment.  To provide some idea of the magnitude of the infrastructure at Heathrow, there are more than 45 000 man holes, 72 miles of high pressure fire water mains, 81 miles of aviation fuel pipelines, and power cables carry voltages ranging from 9V up to 400 kV.

That is a lot of infrastructure to manage.  The challenge is made more difficult because it is an environment where even a minor accident carries the risk of serious consequences.  (At last year's Autodesk University, Shashi Verma gave a talk about asset management at Heathrow called Flying High: Multi-Utility and Infrastructure Project Implementation at Heathrow Airport.)

At the Geospatial World Forum, Nigel Stroud, Geometry Information Manager with the British Airports Authority (BAA) at Heathrow gave a fascinating talk about the Heathrow Map Live system which provides web-based access to high quality information about Heathrow's infrastructure.  The primary reason that access to quality information is important is for safety reasons, but there are also legal and contractual requirements, such as CDM (Construction Design Management) regulations. And there is an important efficiency dimension to this as well.

Single point of truth

To enable interoperability and open access to various types of data, Heathow has defined a Common Data Environment (CDE), the objective of which is basically a single point of truth.  The objective of CDE is to cultivate a culture where data is created once only and used many times.  Another way to put this is that each data element has a single owner and is shared across the organization.  Implementing this is much more difficult than it sounds.  In many organizations, different groups independently capture and maintain  information about the same assets.  For example, in a study of a single utility Gartner found that nine different groups were independently capturing and maintaining similar data about power poles. At Heathrow CDE means that standards,  guidelines, and work processes are designed to support a single point of truth.  The important business benefit from a cost perspective is that having a common data environment minimizes rework, increases re-use of designs and provides for efficient handover from design and construction to operations.

Data quality

Because safety is Heathrow's first concern, data quality is a top priority. Reliable data about infrastructure is required to respond effectively to an emergency as well as to provide information about the location of existing infrastructure to the more than a thousand contractors working at Heathrow at any given time.  In 2002 40% of Heathrow's underground facilities were mapped to within half a meter. Now 72% of the underground facilities are mapped to half a meter. 

In my view, the most important thing that Heathrow has done is designing business processes to optimize data quality.  For example, contractors at Heathrow are contractually obligated to progressively deliver as-builts over the lifetime of construction projects.  In other words, as-builts are not only required at the end of the project, but during the progress of construction, so that they can reviewed by BAA as work proceeds.

Heathrow has had an effective asset management system for capturing and maintaining information about infrastructure including infrastructure and building models, drawings, operations and maintenance reference manuals, and asset maintenance reports for many years, but has found it a challenge to provide access to this information across the business.  This is what the Heathrow Map Live system accomplishes, a single, simple web-based tool based on an Oracle database that allows everyone within the business to query, retrieve and view information about Heathrow's infrastructure.

Avoiding underground infrastructure during excavation

One of the major hazards of all construction activity is inadvertently hitting underground infrastructure.  To give some idea of how frequent this occurs, in the US in 2010 there were 112,917 incidents where underground utility facilities were hit during excavation.

At an airport this is particularly hazardous because not only are there gas mains and electricity distribution cables, but also aviation fuel lines and very high voltage power lines.   This is one of the biggest benefits of the Heathrow Map LIve system.  At Heathrow statistics show that the proportion of events where underground facilities were hit during excavation as a result of inaccurate information decreased by a factor of 6x from 2002 to 2011, primarily as a result of access to high quality information including location about underground infrastructure provided by Heathrow Map Live.

Latin America Geospatial Forum: Common database for urban underground infrastructure in Sao Paulo and Rio de Janiero

I have blogged in the past about some of the very few cities in the world where you can find all the underground infrastructure in a single database.  The business benenfits of a common underground facility database are immense.  First of all it can dramatically reduce the cost of locate services provided by each utility to service call-before-you-dig or one-call-center requests.  It also reduces the risk of accidents during excavation, and it also simplies the process of connecting a new building to electric, water, wastewater, gas, and telecommunications services.

Several years ago I had the opportunity to give a presentation to members of the Prefeitura da Sao Paulo, and I mentioned the well known gas explosion in Belgium several years ago resulting from a routine excavation accidentally hitting a gas main.  Someone in the group I was talking to piped up and said, oh yes we had two of those last week.  This kind of thing, though fortunately most of the time without fatal consequences, happens with much greater frequency than most of us are aware.

At the Latin American Geospatial Forum this week in Rio de Janeiro this week, there have been two fascinating talks about how the cities of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro are addressing this challenge.

Sao Paulo

Antonia Ribeiro Guglielmi outlined a project of the Prefeitura da Cidade called GeoCONVIAS that is integrating data from 20 to 30 utilities which operate in the city of Sao Paulo, which with a population of 11 million is one of the World;s largest cities.  According to Antonia, the city has 10,000 publicf works projects per month.  The most important objectives  of the ConVIAS project are to

• organize underground infrastructure
• prevent accidents (safe excavation)
• reduce inconvenience to the public
• reduce the costs of maintaining underground infrastucture

As in Calgary, utilities in Sao Paulo are not asked to provide detailed information about their underground facilities, just "a simple line" showing the location of their facilities.

Given the size of Sao Paulo, I am very impressed with what Sao Paulo is doing.  This is an ambitious, but in my view an essential, project, and something I foresee every city is going to have to do as the pace of urbanization continues to accelerate.

Rio de Janeiro

Luiz Roberto Arueira from the Prefeitura da Cidade do Rio de Janeiro described a similar project GeoVias funded by the government of the City of Rio de Janeiro and four utilties including

• CEG gasNatural fenosa - Companhia Distribuidora de Gás do Rio de Janeiro
• LIGHT - Serviços de Eletricidade
• OI – Telemar Norte Leste S/A
• CEDAE – Companhia Estadual de Águas e Esgotos

One of the immediate motivations for this project is "man hole explosions" apparently resulting from the close proximity of underground electrical and gas facilities in Rio.  The objectives of the project in Rio are somewhat different from Sao Paulo, apparently because the network of underground facilities isn Rio is absolutely unique, certainly in Brazil, but maybe even in the world.

• Reduce risk of accidents
• Eliminate hazardous interaction between different networks, for example, electric power and gas
• Provide information about the location of underground networks for construction projects

 It is hoped that the project will also speed up the process of reviewing construction permit applications, which currently can take a year to complete, and emergency repairs to underground infrastructure.

Given the uniqueness, complexity and hazards associated with the utility networks in Rio de Janiero this is an essential project to reduce the risk of accidents, but which I expect will have many other important benefits.

Pipeline accidents and maintaining high quality data about facilities

One of my priority topics on this blog (most recently here) and for speaking engagements is the issue of data quality, especially relating to underground infrastructure.  I think it is fair to say that as a rule in North America we don't know where underground facilities are. If you have any doubt about that assertion, call up your One-Call or Call-Before-You-Dig centre, and tell them that you intend to excavate somewhere.  What you will typically find is that seven or eight trucks will show up from all the local utility and telephone companies with magic wands and dowsing rods to determine if any of their pipes or cables run through where you plan to dig.  Rolling trucks is expensive and costs utility and telephone companies a lot of money.  If their data on their facilities were reliable, they woudn't have to send a truck out and that would save money and the time of increasingly valuable staff.  The other cost is risk to human life.  Pipeline explosions are dangerous and often involve fatalities.  The infamous gas explosion in Belgium immediately comes to mind.  Another well known example is the steam pipe exposion in New York City.

The New York Times has published an article listing some recent gasline explosions

• In February in Allentown, Pennsylvania, an explosion from a natural gas pipeline killed five people
• In September, a 30-inch-diameter pipeline in San Bruno, Calif., exploded, killing eight people and burning down three dozen houses.
• In July, a pipeline in Kalamazoo, Michigan ruptured and more than a million gallons of corrosive bitumen from the Canadian tar sands leaked.

If I remember the last time there was a cluster of pipeline accidents (Bellingham and El Paso gas where there fatalities), government moved to improve the quality of geospatial and other data about underground pipeline assets. The result within about two years was the federal Pipeline Safety Act, which required companies owning pipelines carrying hazardous materials to walk all of their lines with a GPS, conduct a "moving circle" analysis, and identify high risk areas for further inspection.  This cost a relatively small utility in Pennsylvania that I was familiar with at the time $2 million over two years. The positive result it that it forces utility companies to maintain facilities data at a ligher level of quality.

According to the New York Times, at San Bruno the problem was that Pacific Gas and Electric did not know what kind of pipe it had buried in the ground.  "Pipe fabrication flaws in the 1950s helped lay the groundwork for the accident, and more recent problems, including a poor understanding of the computers used to manage the system, may also have played a role."

In 2004 in the UK an act was passed called the Traffic Management Act which came into force a couple of years later and requires utility companies and local authorities to recort digitally the location of street-works activities in England and Wales. The motivation for this act is to help reduce disruption for the travelling public.

Some of the problems in the US identified in the article include

• Unregulated pipelines that have resulted from the shale gas boom  in the US.
• Aging pipelines

I see two lessons from these pipeline incidents. 

• It is a challenge for utility companies to be proactive about data quality.  As a rule regulators and government have to provide the motivating policies to encourage utility companies to improve the quality of their facilities records. 
• It is a challenge for governments to be proactive about mandating data quality and not wait for a serious incident to act.

Major initiatives like smart grid mean that facilities data will need to be 100% accurate and real time, to quote a colleague of mine.  I see data quality as a top priority for the next generation of infrastructure.  This will require not only improving the quality of our data about existing infrastructure, but also changing business processes and organization structures to ensure that we can maintain a high level of data quality.

Thanks to Melanie Ensign for pointing me to the New York Times article.

MEST 2009: Locating Underground Infrastructure in Bahrain

Today at MEST 2009, I had the opportunity to see a system for maintaining a single database containing all underground infrastructure in Bahrain.  A single repository for all underground facilities is something that is only possible in a very few places in the world such as Tokyo and other Japanese cities, Sarajevo, Calgary, and Edmonton, which are the ones I am aware of.  The system I saw is the Intelligent Decision Support System (iDSS) of the Ministry of Works and it was shown to me by Mr. Abbas Ally, Head of Central Planning Engineering in the Central Planning Office (CPO).

The Bahrain underground infrastructure system is unique for several reasons.

One Database of All Underground Infrastructure

According to Mr. Abbas the location of all underground infrastructure in Bahrain is stored in a single Oracle Spatial RDBMS.

• electricity including transmission, distribution, and street lighting,
• water including transmission and distribution,
• wastewater including storm, road, sanitary, and combined
• telecommunications

Stewardship

The source databases are maintained by the respective owners, water and electricity by the Water and Electricity Authority, telecommunications by Batelco, and wastewater by the Ministry of Works.  iDSS has several layers of security, using OS and Oracle security, that determines who can see what, and who can update what.

Frequent Updates

The intention is for each operational database to be replicated to the iDSS database, which means that the iDSS database will be as up-to-date as the source databases are, though this capability does not appear to be functional at the present time.  In the short time that I have been here I haven't been able to determine how reliable the individual source databases, electricity, water, wastewater, and telecommunications, are.

Excavation Requests

Anyone proposing to add to or make a change to undergound infrastructure is required to complete a Proposal Request, essentially a building permit.  The request is forwarded electronically to all of the participating utilities, who are required to review and respond to the request within three days.  Utilities who don't respond within three days are assumed to have approved the request.  In 2008 over 7,000 requests were processed.

Voluntary

Accordng to Mr. Abbas, participation in iDSS is voluntary, but all utilities and Batelco are participating.  Mr. Abbas explained that the primary reason that all the utility and telecommunications companies have agreed to participate is the business benefits they see resulting from participation.  Given the amount of money utilities and telcos in North America spend on locating underground facilities in response to Call-Before-You-Dig and One-Call centers requests, I expect the business benefits to the individual utilities are considerable.