Between the Poles: National underground infrastructure map could deliver £245 million per year to UK

Geoff Zeiss

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Open Source Geospatial Foundation OSGEO
OSGeo was created to support the collaborative development of open source geospatial software and promote its widespread use
Proven guidelines for reducing underground infrastructure damage at airports, university, industrial, and commercial campuses, and towns
There are proven measures that an administration, owner, or municipal government responsible for an airport, university, industrial or commercial campus, or town can undertake to reduce the risk of underground utility damage, the associated disruptions to operations and business and the danger for workers and the public.
Sharing information about the location of underground utilities
The U.S. devotes an estimated $10 billion annually to locating underground infrastructure. Every construction project requiring excavation involves significant efforts in locating underground utilities prior to and during construction to reduce the risk of injuries and unexpected project delays. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again. There are successful examples around the world where municipal and regional governments have helped enable a shared underground utility network database.
Growing evidence of the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach to construction
Building information modeling (BIM) has been applied to design-build construction projects for many years. A growing number of countries are mandating BIM for public projects. While the UK government has said that "...we know that the largest prize for BIM lies in the operational stages of the project life-cycle", until recently there has not been hard data to support this conjecture. Similarly there has been only anecdotal support for an integrated BIM and geospatial approach for design, build, operate and maintain projects. Now we are beginning to see data from real world projects that offer evidence for the benefits of an integrated BIM+geospatial full lifecycle approach for construction projects.
Progress in geospatial, civil, and BIM interoperability promises efficient workflows for infrastructure
The BIM and geospatial interoperability challenge is the latest symptom of the broader problem of integrating AEC and geospatial workflows, that has contributed to low productivity in the construction sector. After the announcement about a year ago by Jack Dangermond and Andrew Anagnost of a new relationship to build a bridge between Autodesk and ESRI technologies, I thought it a good time to review progress toward interoperability between the AEC and geospatial worlds.
Geography2050: Accurate location information about underground infrastructure is essential for powering our future planet
I thought it would be worth while to include here a talk I gave at GEOGRAPHY 2050 Powering Our Future Planet at Columbia University in New York about the importance of accurate location information about underground infrastructure for the future development of the energy grid. With some notable exceptions accurately recording the location of subsurface infrastructure including oil, gas, electric power and other energy infrastructure is ignored - perhaps this is a case of out-of-sight is indeed out-of-mind. The reality is that knowing the location of underground energy infrastructure is critical for national security, for disaster planning and management, for public safety and for economic efficiency. Everyone is aware of at least one disaster resulting from or exacerbated by not knowing where our energy infrastructure is - the explosions in San Bruno in California (2010) and Belgium (2004) immediately come to mind.
Deep learning enables automated extraction of building footprints and road networks from satellite imagery
Automated feature extraction from satellite imagery has made major progress in the last year. Accurate building footprints extracted from high resolution satellite imagery are becoming available from companies such as Ecopia, which has just announced a partnership with DigitalGlobe, whose satellites are capable of 30 cm (approximately one foot) resolution. Also NVIDIA has demonstrated the ability to automate detection of many road networks using sophisticated algorithms and multi-spectral high resolution imagery.
BIM + geospatial interoperability would avoid another CAD + GIS quagmire
A specific challenge currently facing the AEC and geospatial industries is integrating building information models (BIM) and geospatial infrastructure and building models. There are parallels between what happened in the 1990s in unsuccessfully addressing CAD+GIS interoperability and the current challenge of BIM+geospatial interoperability. But there are also important differences which provide grounds for optimism that the availability of both BIM and geospatial standards, a vibrant open source geospatial community, and a new willingness on the part of major software players in the BIM and geospatial industries will make it possible to successfully address the latest interoperability challenge facing the AEC (architecture, engineering and construction) and geospatial industries.
BVLOS drones improve power line inspections amid increasing fire and storm risks for utilities | Utility Dive
Transmission line inspections for vegetation management and other purposes are essential in ensuring grid reliability and resilience. We saw the devastating effect of vegetation encroachment in the recent California fires, which in part have been blamed on failure to maintain properly cleared transmission lines. With drones that can cover great distances in a single flight and provide detailed and accurate aerial imagery of transmission lines and other infrastructure, it is now possible to almost completely automate this expensive process. Automating transmission line inspections for vegetation management using BVLOS drones not only saves money, but also could improve the resiliency and reliability of the transmission grid.

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May 02, 2019

National underground infrastructure map could deliver £245 million per year to UK

The Geospatial Commission’s Annual Plan 2019/20 describes the activities that it plans to undertake in 2019/2020 to develop the UK’s National Geospatial Strategy. The first project announced for 2019/2020 is its intention to fund two pilots that would lead to a national rollout of a National Underground Asset Register.

The Geospatial Commission was created in April 2018 as an independent, expert committee in the centre of government. The objective is to create value for the national economy from geospatial data and to further develop the UK’s geospatial expertise for the global market. The Geospatial Commission issued a Call for Evidence in August 2018 to identify opportunities relating to geospatial data and technologies.

The Geospatial Commission has sought to identify low hanging fruit, the priority sectors and interventions that will provide value rapidly and where the need for government intervention is clearest. One of first that was identified is the significant value that could be released by accurate and reliable subsurface data by a National Underground Asset Register. Such a register would lower risk for every construction and infrastructure project, because current practice is hugely inefficient and error prone as the gas explosion in 2004 in Flanders has shown. Recognizing the risk of asset strikes with attendant danger to life, project delays, cost overruns and disruption to traffic and local economies, over the past year the Geospatial Commission has conducted a research exercise into the business of locating underground utilities. As a result the Geospatial Commission has just announced that its first 2019/20 project is an investment of £3.9 million into two regional pilots; one led by the Greater London Authority (GLA) in London and the the other led by the Ordnance Survey in the North East of England. The GLA will focus on data conditioning and modelling, and the OS will provide the prototype platform and associated technical design and experience to test the use cases of safer digging and project and data-exchange efficiencies. This has a total estimated value of £245 million per annum. These pilots will be used to determine how to proceed with the tender for a regional build and national rollout of a National Underground Asset Register. The Geospatial Commission has estimated that a national underground infrastructure map could deliver £245 million per year to the UK economy.

Posted at 12:03 PM in 3D data, Construction, Data Quality, Economic Data, Underground infrastructure, Value of spatial data | Permalink

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Between the Poles

Geoff Zeiss

March 2023

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May 02, 2019

National underground infrastructure map could deliver £245 million per year to UK

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