Automated One-Call system in the Netherlands for excavation damage prevention

I have blogged numerous times about the challenge of accurately geolocating underground utilties. Most recently I blogged about the estimated ROI for investment in improving the geolocation and other information about underground utilities and the remarkable project of the City of Las Vegas to create a 3D model of its underground utilities.

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One-Call in the Netherlands (KLIC)

 Yesterday at the INSPIRE conference in Florence, Ad van Houtum of the Dutch Kadaster described how the Netherlands is addressing this challenge.  The Netherlands has had what in North America is called a One-Call or Call-Before-You-Dig system since 1967. The objective of the system is to prevent damages to the utility network and to ensure the safety of excavators during excavations. 

From 1967 to 2010 The Netherlands had a manual One Call System (KLIC) that worked similarly to North American One-Call systems. Anyone planning an excavation would call the One-Call telephone number and communicate the location, duration, and other information about the planned excavation. The One-Call center would contact the relevant utilities (network operators) who would then send maps of their network infrastructure to the excavator. (In North America the utilities would more typically send vans and staff with equipment to try to locate underground facilities.) The Dutch service was free of charge for excavators and funded by the network operators. It generally took about three working days to provide the required information to the excavator.

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KLIC-Online

 In 2010 the Netherlands switched to a digital information system (KLIC-Online) that worked in a similar way except that everything could be done online.  With KLIC the turnaround time was reduced to hours. Both the manual and KLIC-Online One-Call systems were voluntary until 2008 when a law was passed which made KLIC mandatory for both network operators and excavators with severe penalties for excavators who circumvented the system. There is also a charge of € 29.50 for every excavation request.

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KLIC 2020

 The Netherlands is now planning the next version called KLIC 2020.  The business drivers for the next version is to further reduce the number of incidents of excavation damage, improve the efficiency of both network operators and excavators, and to make the information available to other domains such as planning and zoning and public security.

The industry wants the system to be available 24x7, near real-time, and should include other information in addition to network infrastructure such as soil types, ground water, parcel file, and so on. It also should have a secure authentication and authorization service. It is planned that the view service will be based on the OGC WMS standard, and the download service on WFS.

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INSPIRE and KLIC 2020

 Annex III Theme 6a Utility Services (INSPIRE US) is the relevant INSPIRE standard. All government agencies are required to adhere to this standard. This includes 80 % of the network operators in the Netherlands.

In this context the KLIC 2020 system will be INSPIRE US compliant, with 24x7 availability, 99% up time, supporting more than 20 simultaneous users with a better than 5 second response time for viewing and better than 20 seconds to begin downloads.