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.