Public safety is at risk whenever the location of underground infrastructure is unknown or inaccurately known. For example, in Belgium workers on a construction project rupture a high pressure gas line they did not know was in the vicinity and the resulting explosion results in fatalities and injuries. Or a house explodes when a gas line penetrates a sewer line during trenchless horizontal drilling and an attempt is made to clear the resulting obstruction with an augur. Or it requires hours to identify the source of an explosion in a residential neighbourhood in San Bruno, California which caused fatalities. Similar events have occurred in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, Allentown, Pennsylvania, Bellingham, Washington, El Paso, Texas, Saudi Arabia and a number of other locations.
Damages and delays connected with underground utilities during construction represent at a minimum a $50 billion drag on the U.S. economy. For example, a project in Sydney, Australia to extend a light rail transit system encountered many unknown underground utilities during construction which delayed the project by one and half years. In the U.S., a leading cause of highway construction delays is missing or inaccurate information about the location of underground utilities. To address the risk of liabilities associated with unknown or inaccurately located underground utilities, contractors regularly increase bid costs by a minimum of 10-30%.
A digital twin of the underground would eliminate or ameliorate these issues. Creating a digital twin requires addressing challenges. First of all, considerable effort goes into detecting the location of underground utilities in preparation for and during construction on virtually all projects, but this data is rarely shared. If a way could be found to share this data, not only would contractors not have to rediscover the location of underground utilities over and over again, but over time a 3D map of underground infrastructure would emerge at no significant additional cost to construction contractors. Secondly, a technological advance is required that enables the efficient, safe and rapid capture and processing of remote sensed data to create accurate 3D maps of the underground. Recently there have been advances in addressing both of these issues that provide grounds for optimism that we are close to being able to cost-effectively create a digital twin of underground infrastructure.
Putting this in the context of smart cities, where data in the form of a national digital twin becomes just as important as physical assets, it is essential that a national digital twin include above and below ground assets. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset. Furthermore, managing this data cost-effectively requires finding ways to integrate data and services relating to the underground with other city data.
Why a digital twin of underground infrastructure is important
The impact of poor information about the location of underground utilities is exemplified in the Sydney Light Rail Project. This is a $2.1 billion PPP project for a 12 km of light rail extension in Sydney, Australia to be completed by 2019. In preparation for construction a year was allocated for identifying potentially conflicting utilities in the proposed right of way. About 500 subsurface utilities were identified and scheduled for relocation. During construction a further 400 unmapped utility services were encountered. An economic impact study by an independent consulting firm estimated that the project could have been completed at least one and a half years sooner if a complete and reliable 3D map of underground infrastructure had been available at the project planning stage.
In the U.S. underground utilities are a leading causes of highway construction delays. Almost all construction projects for buildings or infrastructure contain a design constraint: existing utilities strung overhead on visible structures or hidden underground. The traditional strategy for the highway designer has been to ignore utilities during design. Prior to construction utilities in the areas were requested to locate any of their underground infrastructure in the proposed right of way. Utilities are routinely relocated, often at great expense, often unnecessarily and often negatively impacting budget and schedule of the construction project. A more cost-effective alternative “design-to-accommodate” is to locate utilities first and then design the highway to avoid them, but that requires reliable information about where the utilities are located. This is rarely available. Between the two alternatives of relocating utilities and designing the highway to avoid utilities whose location is poorly known designers try to find a workable compromise that meets the highway construction scope and mission, while minimizing impacts to utility facilities. If successful, this can result in substantial savings in utility relocation costs and impacts, as well as overall savings to the project budget and timeline. A survey has found that state departments of transportation (DOTs) overwhelmingly would like to get utilities involved as early as possible to reduce project risk by determining what utility infrastructure is present in the project area and where it is located. The study found that there is a general consensus that this would help make better decisions regarding relocation versus design-to-accommodate. When comprehensive and accurate utility location data is available, better decisions can be made, and the risk of unforeseen problems due to utilities emerging during the construction phase are reduced.
According to the Common Ground Alliance (CGA), in the United States an underground utility line is hit on average every 60 seconds, that is 390,366 hits in 2016. In addition there is always the risk of injuries and fatalities. I have estimated that the total cost to the national economy is over $50 billion. The problem is a location one; we simply don't know where our underground infrastructure is. In most municipalities in North America underground utility lines have been put in the ground not according to plan but wherever it has been easiest and cheapest to build them. As a result 2D as-builts of underground infrastructure are notoriously unreliable. Neither the local municipality or the utility network owner know the location of underground utilities.
Construction bids routinely include an added cost, which can amount to 10%-30% of the bid cost, to cover the risk associated with underground utilities. In spite of the effort in locating underground infrastructure that is part of virtually every construction project the information is rarely shared and as a result the location of the same underground utilities is often captured over and over again for different construction projects.
As a result locating underground utilities is an essential part of every construction project involving excavation and has become a major industry in the U.S. The Common Ground Alliance (CGA) which is an association of companies and practitioners in North America reports 1700 members in the U.S. and Canada. The last CGA annual conference and exhibition attracted 800 attendees and over a hundred exhibitors which gives a feeling for the size of the locate sector.
In the UK about 4 million excavations are carried out every year on the UK road network to install or repair buried utility pipes and cables. Not knowing the location of buried assets causes practical problems that increase costs and delay projects, but more importantly, it increases the risk of injury for utility owners, contractors and road users. The problems associated with inaccurate location of buried pipes and cables are serious and are rapidly worsening due to the increasing density of underground infrastructure in major urban areas. Research at the University of Birmingham has determined the direct costs of utility strikes in the U.K.
|
Facility |
Avg cost per strike |
|
Electricity |
£ 970 |
|
Gas |
£485 |
|
Telecom |
£400 |
|
Fibre-optic |
£2800 |
|
Water |
£300-980 |
The researchers have found that the true costs, including indirect and social costs, associated with utility strikes is 29 times the direct cost.
In the U.S. the Common Ground Alliance reports that there were 390,366 documented underground utility hits in 2016. The average costs of the damage for each utility hit were calculated for different types of underground infrastructure.
|
Facility |
Avg cost per damage 2016 |
||
|
Natural gas |
$5,914.00 |
||
|
Telecom |
$3,022.00 |
||
|
Electric |
$4,905.00 |
||
|
Cable TV |
$2,190.00 |
||
|
Water |
$3,003.00 |
||
|
Sewer |
$5,163.00 |
||
|
Liquid pipeline |
$7,711.00 |
||
|
Steam |
$1,800.00 |
||
|
Average |
$4,021.00 |
At an average cost of $4000 per hit, the CGA estimates that the direct cost to the U.S. Economy was $1.5 billion. The CGA emphasizes that this is a conservative minimum estimate and does not include indirect and social costs such as property damage, evacuations, traffic disruption, road closures, resulting lost business, environmental impacts, lawsuits, injuries, and fatalities. If the ratio of total to direct cost determined by the researchers at the University of Birmingham is applicable to the US, it would mean that the total estimated impact of unknown or poorly located underground infrastructure on the U.S. economy is over $50 billion.
Return-on-investment of accurately mapping underground utilities
University research has put a dollar figure on the benefits of accurate location data for underground utilities.
According to a USDOT sponsored survey conducted by Purdue University in 1999, 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.
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.
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.
In 2010 researchers at the University of Toronto took an in-depth look at nine large municipal and highway reconstruction projects that developed an enhanced depiction of buried utilities. Based on this analysis, a cost model was proposed that takes into account both tangible and intangible benefits. All projects showed a positive return-on-investment (ROI) that ranged from $2.05 to $6.59 for every dollar spent on improving underground utility location data.
In Europe an economic analysis of a Milan pilot project to map all underground infrastructure using ground penetrating radar for the Expo Milan 2015 site was carried out. The study found a return on investment of €16 for every euro invested in improving the reliability information of underground infrastructure.
In the U.S. the Federal Highway Authority (FHWA) cites studies that have shown that the cost of detecting underground utilities prior to construction typically costs less than 0.5 percent of the total project construction cost, saves more than $4 for every $1 spent, and can reduce project delivery time by as much as 20 percent.
Growing private investment in infrastructure drives technology investment in construction
The need for investment in infrastructure has continued to grow. It has been estimated that some $57 trillion will be required over the next decade and a half, or an estimated $90 trillion if we want to ensure that this infrastructure is sustainable. Increasingly infrastructure projects require private investment because governments simply have less and less money for capital projects. To fill the shortfall requires private capital. Private capital in pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign investment funds amounts to over $50 trillion. Beginning in 2004 some of this money began to find its way into infrastructure investment and by 2007 private investment in infrastructure had reached $ 40 billion annually before the world financial crisis led to a cutback. Since then private investment in infrastructure has rebounded reaching nearly $80 billion in 2016.
Until recently construction has been at the bottom of the list with hunting and agriculture among industries with respect to investment in research and development. There are signs that this is changing. In the last few years the number of startups focussed on technological innovation in construction has risen dramatically. Partly this can be ascribed to technological innovation that makes technologies such as reality capture, building information modeling (BIM), and augmented reality more accessible, but this is amplified by growing private investment in infrastructure. Private investment, unlike government investment which aims at social benefits, seeks financial returns. Whether the source of the funds is a pension fund, an insurance company, or a sovereign wealth fund, investments are expected to show a high likelihood of generating a significant financial return. This in turn drives productivity because increasing productivity of construction and operations and maintenance increases the return on investment.
Accelerating R&D into underground detection and modeling
There are indications of increased research and development initiatives related to underground infrastructure. In the U.S. for the first time the Common Ground Alliance (CGA), which represents the utility locate industry in North America, has just released a Technology Report, which describes the current state of underground detection technology including the latest developments and the gaps which CGA has identified in current hardware and software.
In the UK there have been quite a few research initiatives relating to underground infrastructure. Project Iceberg, a collaborative project between Ordnance Survey (OS), British Geological Survey and Future Cities Catapult, has been created to better capture, collect and share data about underground assets and geological conditions and to find a way of sharing all this information among utility and energy companies, the transport sector, street works planners, building developers, and the construction industry. The Mayor of London and the Smart London Infrastructure Network, which is composed of utilities responsible for water, energy, telecommunications and waste management in London, sponsored a challenge with the objective of developing digital technologies to accurately locate underground assets, including pipes, cables and joints, and determine their condition. The goal was to improve safety, and to reduce operational downtime, cost and environmental impact, and disruption. A national 10 year academic research program Mapping the Underworld focussed on remote-sensing for locating sub-surface utilities has just completed and been replaced by a follow-on 10 year program Assessing the Underworld. The BIM for the Subsurface (2015-2017) project, funded by Innovate UK, aimed to address issues such as project delays due to unforeseen ground conditions by applying the BIM process directly to ground investigation and subsurface infrastructure design.
Across Europe the SUB-URBAN COST Action (2013-17) aimed at developing relationships between experts who develop urban subsurface knowledge and urban decision makers, practitioners and the wider research community. The Action established a European network across 30 countries of Geological Surveys, Cities and Research Partners.
There is evidence of growing investment by major vendors in underground detection technology. Hexagon, with revenue of $4 billion annually, acquired IDS (Ingegneria dei Sistemi) GeoRadar, an Italian company that has developed a towed multi-channel ground penetrating radar array that can collect data on underground infrastructure at faster speeds than has been possible heretofore. Since the acquisition Leica continues to release important enhancements to the software used to create 3D models of underground from the GPR scans and other information. Furthermore a major software company, Bentley Geosystems with about $1 billion in annual revenue, has developed software specifically for managing location information about underground infrastructure. Bentley Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) enables users to develop 3D subsurface utility models from 2D models, resolve subsurface utility clashes, and model, analyze, and design subsurface infrastructure networks.
Recent advances in detecting and sharing location of underground utilities
Currently standard practice requires walking a lawn-mower like GPR array or hand-held EM wand along a road or right of way to detect underground utilities. This is not only time-consuming and expensive, in traffic it is extremely dangerous. Recently technical advances in detection were reported that bring rapid, cost-effective and safe collection of location information about underground infrastructure with no boots on the pavement closer to reality. T2 Utility Engineers, based in Whitby, Ontario have reported commercially using a multi-channel ground penetrating radar (GPR) array towed routinely at 10-12 km/hr to capture subsurface data.
In a separate initiative a successful proof of concept by DGT Associates has been reported in Mississauga, Ontario in which data collected by a rig combining mobile laser scanning and GPR arrays collected data simultaneously above and below ground towed at roadway speeds of 80 to 90 km/hr. In both cases the data was collected in soil conditions that were less than optimum for GPR. In both cases no boots were required on the pavement which addresses a serious safety issue with traditional GPR and electromagnetic (EM) detection. However, in both cases significant time was required to post-process the collected scans, combine this information with as-builts, EM scans and other information to create 3D models. Much of the post-processing work remains manual. A rough estimate is that the post-processing requires two weeks per ten kilometers. Nevertheless, that data can be collected safely at or near roadway speeds overcomes an important hurdle in developing 3D models of underground infrastructure. In addition improvements in software are helping to speed up the post-processing required to create 3D models.
A significant cost for virtually every construction project is detecting underground utilities prior to and during construction. This information is rarely shared so that the information about underground utilities collected during construction is effectively lost has to be collected over and over again. There are several initiatives underway to develop ways to share information about underground infrastructure that is captured during construction.
The City of Chicago has launched a pilot to deploy a platform for collecting data and creating and sharing a 3D map of underground. It is based on new technology developed by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Real-Time and Automated Monitoring and Control Lab (RAAMAC) and Chicago start-up CityZenith. During excavation a dozen or more pictures are captured with an inexpensive digital camera. RAAMAC's software uses the photos to create a 3D digital model of the underground infrastructure. These models can be securely shared between the City of Chicago and construction contractors to improve project planning and limiting accidents. The advantage of this approach to data collection is that it does not interfere with construction and does not add any significant cost. In a similar vein Bentley Systems has experimented with a system that equips excavation equipment with four inexpensive digital cameras that are used to collect images of underground infrastructure encountered during excavation. These images can be used to create an accurate georeferenced 3D map of the utilities encountered during excavation. A research project involving Costain and Bentley Systems has found that digital photography during excavation using a consumer grade smartphone can be used to create a 3D model of comparable accuracy to a laser scan survey and at much lower cost.
Recent advances in standards for locating underground utilities
Recently there have been developments that reflect improvements in underground remote sensing technology. Standards for reporting the reliability of the locational information about underground utilities have been in place for decades. In the U.S. the 2003 ASCE 38-02 which has been used for classifying location information about underground infrastructure according to its estimated reliability, is widely seen as being out of date. In France the 2012 presidential decree defines three explicit levels of cartographic accuracy for underground structures; A - less than 40 centimeters, B - 40 centimeters to 1.5 meters, and C - greater than 1.5 meters. In the UK the 2014 Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 128, developed under the auspices of the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE) and others, not only includes the A,B, C, D quality levels of the U.S. standard, but extends it with explicit precision levels B1 to B3. A process to revise PAS 128 to reflect newer technical developments has just been initiated.
Three organizations have sponsored a concept development study by the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) for underground information with the main outcome being an Engineering Report. The sponsors of the OGC Underground Concept Development Study were the Fund for the City of New York - Center for Geospatial Innovation, the Singapore Land Authority, and the Ordnance Survey (UK). The Engineering Report documents the progress made by the OGC and its members to build a complete situation assessment and develop a conceptual framework for action to improve underground infrastructure data interoperability. The report also identifies the most important steps to be taken next in order to develop the necessary data standards.
This led to the development of draft versions of a Model for Underground Data Definition and Interchange ("MUDDI Data Model") and an RoI (return on investment) model Cost Benefit Assessment of Subterranean Information Management. MUDDI is being developed as an interchange and integration model to support a range of critical underground infrastructure and environment information that is currently held in a wide and disparate variety of forms. To review and assess MUDDI through actual implementations, the OGC has issued a call for participation for a MUDDI Workshop to be held July of this year in New York City.
Municipal and regional mapping of underground infrastructure
Some cities and regions have realized the value of knowing where their underground infrastructure is and have required better information about the location of underground utilities. In most cases this involves legislation requiring and implementation of a system for sharing information about underground utilities between utility and telecom companies and construction contractors.
Many years ago Tokyo developed the mainframe-based Road Administration Information Center (ROADIC) system which was deployed first in Tokyo and then in most major cities in Japan. The ROADIC system provides information about the location of underground infrastructure including telecommunications and utilities.
Sarajevo, in Bosnia, has recorded the location of all utility and telecommunications infrastructure operating in the city on paper maps for over 50 years. The building permitting process in Sarajevo required contractors working within the city to supply coordinates of all underground infrastructure to the permitting office where they were transcribed onto paper maps. A decade ago Sarajevo converted these maps to digital format (Oracle Spatial).
Calgary, Alberta has had the JUMP (Joint Utility Mapping Project) for many years. A city by-law requires that anyone placing cables or pipes undergound within city limits provide 2D maps in electronic form showing the location of the infrastructure. The maps only show location and type of infrastructure (water, gas, electric power, telecom) and owner. Anyone excavating in Calgary can access this database. Edmonton, Alberta also has a shared facilities mapping database. The Instituto de Información Territorial del Estado de Jalisco developed an integrated infrastructure database for the State of Jalisco.
A project of the City of Sao Paulo called GeoCONVIAS which integrates data from 20 to 30 utilities operating in the city of Sao Paulo, which is one of the World's largest cities. The most important objectives of the ConVIAS project are to organize underground infrastructure, prevent accidents during excavation, reduce inconvenience to the public, and reduce the costs of maintaining underground infrastucture. The 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.
Rio de Janeiro has a similar project GeoVias funded by the government of the City of Rio de Janeiro and four utilties. One of the immediate motivations for this project was "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. The objectives of the Rio project were to reduce the risk of accidents, eliminate hazardous interaction between different networks, for example, electric power and gas and provide information about the location of underground networks for construction projects. It was hoped that the project would also speed up the process of reviewing construction permit applications, which currently can take a year to complete, and emergency repairs to underground infrastructure.
Penang, Malaysia developed an interesting approach for mapping and maintaining a database of underground facilities. Sutra D'Bank (Penang State Government Subterranean Data Bankis a database that is maintained by a joint venture company Equarater (Penang) Sdn Bhd (EPSB) . Sutra D' Bank's customers are utilities or any other party undertaking excavations in areas under the jurisdiction of the local government. The operator of Sutra D'Bank does two things. They will provide the location of underground facilities in the planned excavation area, using the Sutra D'Bank database of undergound facilities supplemented by an on-site survey using a variety of technologies. This is similar to the service that many utilities and telcos provide, but identifies all underground facilities, not just those of one utility or telco. In addition, the operator of Sutra D'Bank conducts an onsite as-built survey to record the 3D position and all relevant attributes of the new installation which they then upload to the Sutra D' Bank database. This is unique and addresses a common problem - as-designed vs. as-constructed as-builts - that many utilities and telecoms face who rely on their construction contractors for as-builts.
The remarkable Sydney Down Under project brings together utility infrastructure including water, wastewater, telecommunications, electric power, and transportation infrastructure including rail and subways, and roads and highways, together with buildings (above and below ground) including interior spaces and occupants. It was developed by the Emergency Information Coordination Unit of the New South Wales government. This project involves 200 organizations including local and state governments, utilities and the telecommunications company. The project is focussed on emergency and disaster management. Since the information is intended for emergency response applications, its availability is restricted.
A major step forward in mapping underground infrastructure was a pilot project carried out using ground penetrating radar (GPR) on the site of the Expo Milano 2015 event in Milan. The total project area is about 230 000 square meters. All underground infrastructure including electric power, water, sewers, gas, district heating, street lighting, and telecommunication, were mapped using ground penetrating radar (GPR) which was compared to historical records. The comparison revealed major discrepancies in the historic record including thousands of meters of unknown infrastructure. For the known infrastructure large errors of geolocation were recorded. The other ground breaking part of the pilot project was an economic analysis of the costs and benefits of applying GPR to detect the location of underground infrastructure. The analysis estimated that the return on investment is about €16 for every euro invested in improving the reliability information of underground infrastructure.
Initiatives towards national digital twins of infrastructure
Knowing where things are underground has become important enough that in several countries around the world; France, the Netherlands, Singapore, and the U.K. initiatives to improve our knowledge about the location of underground infrastructure are already underway.
In France a nation-wide multi-billion euro project was initiated to improve the quality of the location information about France's underground utility infrastructure. A 2013 presidential decree mandates that by 2019 the location of critical underground infrastructure in urban areas will be mapped to 40 cm or better. (According to the decree critical infrastructure does not include telecommunications or water and sewers.) Furthermore by 2026 the location of all of the nation's infrastructure will be mapped to 40 cm. The decree also specifies the liability for hitting underground infrastructure that shares the responsibility between the utility owner and the the contractor depending on the precision of the information available about the underground facility.
But more importantly, as a potential model for the cost-efficient sharing of information about the underground, the Netherlands has embarked on a national program supported by legislation and standards to expand the collection and sharing of data about the subsurface. In 2015 a new law was passed by the States General in the Netherlands which created the Basisregistratie Ondergrond (BRO) or Key Registry for the Subsurface which is open and accessible to all citizens of the Netherlands. The law mandates that if you excavate or drill you have to share your data with the BRO registry. In addition if when using the data in the registry you find something is incorrect you have to report it. The Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) came into force in January, 2018. The BRO registry consists of 26 data types, which will become mandatory in installments over five years and all of which include location. On 1 January 2018,it become mandatory to report the first three data types, geotechnical surveys (CPT), groundwater monitoring wells and soil drilling sample profiles. On 26 June 2018, this data became publicly available via the Dutch open data portal PDOK. Work is underway to implement data models for the remaining data types including cables and pipes for which the Dutch standard IMKL will be used. All 26 will become mandatory by 2022. The information model cables and pipes (IMKL) is a Dutch standard data model for the exchange of data about underground infrastructure and is founded on the INSPIRE model for cables and pipes, in which location is specified in the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GML format.
As a result of the conjunction of the release of three UK government reports, Industrial Strategy Building A Britiain for the Future, Transforming Infrastructure Performance, and Data for the Public Good, the transformation in how infrastructure is built, managed and operated in the UK has made a national digital twin a key concept for the UK government. A national digital twin includes above and below ground assets. It is based on the foundation concept that a digital model is equally important as the physical assets. Combining above and below-ground information into one national single data model/data exchange framework will allow industry to share business developments and innovation activities. Project Iceberg is an exploratory project undertaken by the British Geological Survey, Ordnance Survey and the Future Cities Catapult to investigate ways to integrate data and services relating to the underground with other city data. To date two reports Market Research into the Current State of Play and Global Case Studies and Defining the problem space for an integrated data operating system above and below ground have been published and are publicly available.The medium term objective is to take these concepts forward with project partners to develop new digital data demonstrator projects.
In Singapore the Urban Redevelopment Authority is planning to have a masterplan of Singapore's underground spaces ready by 2019. It will be released as part of the next Master Plan guiding Singapore's development in the medium term.
In the U.S. an initiative has just been started to create a national infrastructure map which would include subsurface infrastructure. In June of this year a special summit was convened at Arizona State University which included leaders in public administration, infrastructure development, geography, GIS, and data integration/open data. The objective of the meeting was to review the current state of location-based information on national infrastructure including underground, examine efforts to integrate location based data systems across jurisdictions, understand the perspective of stakeholder communities, identify strategies for more systematic access to data at the national scale, and discuss the role of government to implement such strategies.
Summary
Mapping the underground is an essential component of creating a national digital twin. Recent technical development including the ability to collect data at highway speeds that can be used to create a 3D model of underground infrastructure, software that can extract relevant 3D underground information from consumer digital photography and video capture, novel ways to share information about underground infrastructure during construction at no significant additional cost to contractors, and progress on standards for sharing information about the subsurface are bringing us close to being able to cost-effectively create a digital twin of underground infrastructure at the municipal, regional and national levels increasingly feasible.
A key motivation for 3D mapping the subsurface is the risk to construction projects of unknown or poorly mapped underground infrastructure. Every year workers and the members of the public are injured or killed as a result of unforeseen underground utility hits. Underground utilities are the number one cause of delays in highway construction projects. The economic cost to the U.S. economy of not knowing where underground utilities is estimated to be in the tens of billions of dollars. A number of studies have concluded that the ROI of improving the accuracy of location of underground infrastructure is significant, with estimates of the benefits ranging as high as $21 for every dollar invested.
Singapore, the Netherlands and France have adopted policies leading to the development of accurate digital models of their national underground infrastructure. Putting this in the context of smart cities, where data in the form of a national digital twin becomes just as important as physical assets, it is essential that a national digital twin include above and below ground assets. Fundamental to this process is rethinking value, not just the value of a finished building or infrastructure asset, but over the entire lifecycle of an infrastructure asset. The development of a national digital twin has recently been enunciated by the UK government. In the United States an initiative has just been kicked off in March 2018 to develop a national infrastructure map including underground infrastructure. Taken together - the public awareness of the problem, the technical advancements in underground detection in the last few years that are making cost-efficient 3D mapping of the underground increasingly feasible, and the growing recognition of the the benefits of accurate 3D maps of underground infrastructure – have led to accelerated momentum to create a digital twin of the subsurface at the municipal, regional and national levels.
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