Every construction project involves devoting significant efforts to locating underground utilities prior to and during construction. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. At the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Energy Summit at EPRI in Charlotte, Carsten Rönsdorf of the Ordnance Survey (OS) described UK initiatives supported by the OS to address the challenge of sharing information about the location underground infrastructure. In particular, he described a pilot that has gone live in Sunderland (Newcastle on Tyne) in North East England that includes almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data.
North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) is the overall initiative name for OS's and Northumbrian Water's underground work in the North East of England. The first phase of this project was a ‘Common Infrastructure Map’ covering a few small sample areas around Newcastle. This combined map is the first step towards creating the NEUIH. The current phase of the OS initiative is called ‘Sunderland sand box’ and implements a dataset that contains almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data for the city of Sunderland.
In July of last year the OS and Northumbrian Water undertook to create a map of underground infrastructure for Newcastle on Tyne at the Northumbrian Water Group Innovation Festival. The objective was to compile in collaboration with utilities, local authorities and partners a combined infrastructure map for Newcastle and its surrounding area including water, wastewater, gas, electricity, telecoms and other underground services. The project benefited from a spirit of cooperation - all local utilities and telecoms in Newcastle were happy to share their data and had vector data available to contribute. The result was a database where each utility was steward of its own data which was shared through a hub. Interoperability was demonstrated with three different GIS systems consuming the combined underground data. The data could be ingested into GIS systems with internet access, regardless of format. As part of this experiment in creating a shared map of underground utilities, contractors were brought in to actually dig a hole so that participants could experience first had what is involved in excavating to determine the location of buried utility assets. The OS created a web interface to enable excavation teams in the field to access the data relevant to them via a mobile device. By the end of the week it was possible to demonstrate a working system that allowed excavators to query the map of underground utilities and use this information during excavation and construction.
At the innovation festival a data sharing agreement was developed that all parties agreed to – Northumbrian Water, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Power Grid, Openreach, Durham County Council, Newcastle and Sunderland City Councils, Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute, British Geological Survey and Ordnance Survey. Access to different data layers was made possible through an API and desktop and mobile device front ends were designed that provided quick access to integrated underground and above ground data to planners and field engineers .
The NEUIH is expected to reduce the need for potholing - it has been estimated that the total cost of a pothole is on the order of $30,000. It will reduce customer disruption by minimizing street works duration with utilities working together more efficiently. Northumbrian Water Group has estimated savings of approximately £1m from a fully integrated system. These savings will come from a combination of reduced back office effort to produce safe working maps and plans, reduced costs associated with utility strikes and avoidance of abandoned jobs due to lack of information.
Next steps include a harmonized data model (such as the MUDDI model under development by the OGC). The system will also support a feedback loop where the excavator in the field can update location information to correct errors for underground utilities that are encountered during excavation and construction. Such a mechanism would be expected to lead to improved quality of location information over time. The system will also make it possible to upload supplementary evidence such as open trench photos.
An important issue for any shared dataset of underground utilities is liability. In the UK, as in North America, the liability for any damage to and resulting from underground infrastructure is generally the contractor's who is required to employ safe excavation practices. In contrast Carsten reported that in Belgium where the KLIP system for providing location information about underground infrastructure has been in place for a number of years, legislation has been passed that shifts the liability to the utility owners. In France liability is shared between the contractor and utility owners.
This is a remarkable achievement, thanks in large measure to the high level of cooperation among the local utilities and telecoms. It will be interesting to see the quantified benefits realized by the shared underground infrastructure database. Another important metric to monitor is how well the database is maintained. One of the most important metrics is the backlogs of as-builts and updates. The longer the queue of backlogs, the less people will rely on the information in the database.
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