Between the Poles

A revolutionary source of accurate underground utility location data for SUE and other surveys

Recently jurisdictions such as Colorado have mandated SUE surveys on all public civil engineering projects. Return on investment (ROI) studies of subsurface engineering utility engineering (SUE) surveys applied to highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment from conducting SUE surveys as part of highway construction projects.  Studies have found that the major benefits of SUE surveys are improved construction efficiency, greater probability of on-time and on-budget project completions, fewer and shorter utility service outages and less traffic disruption and delays for the motoring public. The objective of a SUE survey is to identify and locate all underground infrastructure in the area of the proposed project to ASCE 38-02 Quality Level B or better.

SUE surveys currently rely on on-site detection technologies such as electromagnetic (EM), ground penetrating radar (GPR), and other methods to remotely detect underground utilities.  Potholing is also routinely conducted as part of a SUE survey to confirm the identification and location of utilities that have been detected by remote sensing technologies. Using remote detection methods and potholing requires "boots on the pavement" which raises safety as a major concern when conducting a SUE survey.  EM devices are typically handheld wands and GPR is usually mounted on pushcarts. Data acquisition occurs at a walking pace.  Furthermore the reliable interpretation of GPR scans requires an experienced geotechnical practitioner. Together these factors make current technology used for SUE surveys slow, laborious processes with serious safety issues.

But a revolutionary technology innovation has been developed by 4M-Analytics that could provide SUE practitioners with a source of data without the major disadvantages of traditional remote detection methods.  It is safer because it does not require boots on the pavement, it provides accurate locations reliably, can be conducted without traffic and other disruptions, and can be generated much more rapidly than the traditional on-site remote detection methods and is available in most rural areas in the world. Intended for rural linear civil engineering projects in such as pipelines and transportation routes 4M-Analytics' technology utilizes high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, computer vision algorithms, and training sets for machine learning developed for different biomes, including forests, grasslands, and deserts. The deliverable to the SUE practitioner is a complete, accurate and up-to-date utility conflict map showing the location of all underground utilities and pipelines intersecting a proposed civil engineering project.

SUE is rapidly growing in importance for civil engineering projects. 4M-Analytics' revolutionary approach to locating underground infrastructure, which utilizes the huge volume of aerial and satellite earth observation imagery that has been built up over the past decades together with machine learning and other AI algorithms, can provide an important source of rapidly produced, safely acquired, and reliable underground location data for SUE practitioners.

 

Quick overview of ASCE 75-22 "As-installed" Standard

In most jurisdictions worldwide the low quality of underground infrastructure location data has been identified as a top cause of underground utility damage. Existing underground data, most of which is stored in network owners' utility records, is inaccurate, out of date or simply missing.  In North America in a survey of 402 locate professionals better facility maps received nearly unanimous agreement as a top strategy for improving the efficiency and quality of locates.  Singapore's Digital Underground project is unequivocal about the impact of low quality underground location data stating that "virtually all stakeholders are aware that much of the available information is unreliable and that this has repeatedly led to losses of time, money and opportunities." 

Until now there has never been a standard for an “As-Installed” (often referred to as “As-Built”) utility data record for which location, positional accuracy, geometry, dimensions, type, function, ownership, materials, or operational status of a utility feature are among the data documented. The lack of a standard for utility as-installed record data has resulted in utility records that are of inconsistent data quality, content, and formats not conducive for data exchange.

ASCE 75-22 Standard

The purpose of this standard guideline is to specify essential elements for recording and exchanging data about the location, size, orientation, function, ownership and other attributes of newly installed, relocated, or otherwise exposed utility infrastructure. The benefits of such a standard are the exchange of consistent underground and above ground utility data among construction stakeholders, support for digital project design standards such as building information modelling (BIM), and reduced underground utility damage through sharing of more consistent and reliable infrastructure data.

The 75-22 standard should be used whenever subsurface utility infrastructure is exposed such as newly installed, relocated and daylighted utility infrastructure. Various techniques of modern reality capture including LiDAR and photogrammetric scanning and high accuracy GNSS should be used to record  the location of exposed infrastructure to ensure survey accuracy.

Data exchange framework

The 75-22 standard defines a data exchange framework which includes a minimum, optional, and conditional set of elements that every utility data model may include.  Utility infrastructure data stakeholders have developed different data models and management tools to handle the data. The data exchange framework identifies specific data elements to collect and manage for newly constructed or exposed utility infrastructure to facilitate a variety of functions including exchange of consistent underground and above ground utility data among construction stakeholders and reduced underground utility damage through sharing of reliable infrastructure data.

The data exchange framework is derived from standard geospatial data models and includes: feature types, geometry types and feature attributes. Every 2D geospatial data model includes at a bare minimum the spatial data types: line strings, points, and polygons.  Among the data elements defining most utility data models can be found the following data types (often with a different name): segment, device, access point, support structure, containing structure, secured utility area, encasement, marker, and tracer. Associated with these feature types are attributes that define the properties of individual features. 

ASCE 38-22 Quality Levels

A Utility Quality Level is assigned by a Professional to each subsurface Utility Feature.  The Quality Level identifies the uncertainty of a subsurface Utility Feature’s existence and actual location to that of its documented location.

Utility Quality Level A (QLA): A value assigned to that portion of a subsurface Utility Feature that is directly exposed and measured and whose location and dimensions are tied to the Project Survey Datum. The subsurface Utility Feature shall be tied to the Project Survey Datum with an accuracy of 0.1 ft (30 mm) vertical and to 0.2 ft (60 mm) horizontal for the outside limits of the Utility Feature that is exposed.This is the default quality level for newly installed utility equipment.

Utility Quality Level B (QLB): A value assigned to a subsurface Utility Feature whose existence and horizontal position is based on Geophysical Methods combined with professional judgment and whose location is tied to the Project Survey Datum.

Utility Quality Level C (QLC): A value assigned to a Utility Segment not visible at the ground surface whose estimated position is judged through correlating Utility records or similar evidence to Utility Features, visible above ground and/or underground.

Utility Quality Level D (QLD): A value assigned to Utility Feature not visible at the ground surface whose estimated position is judged through Utility records, information from others, or from visual clues such as pavement cuts, obvious trenches, or existence of service.

Positional accuracy

Utility company records comprise the vast majority of the data we have about underground utilities. Much of this data is inaccurate, out of date or simply missing (especially in the case of abandoned infrastructure and infrastructure without a known owner). Jurisdictions around the world recognizing the critical importance of accurate data are implementing policies to ensure data quality. ASCE 75 is central to these initiatives and has already been mandated in Montana and Colorado as the "as-installed" standard for new infrastructure in state right of ways.

The ASCE 75 standard includes positional accuracy for horizontal and vertical data points.

In the context of underground infrastructure location data locators, professional surveyors and engineers, network operators, and one call centres have different responsibilities in collecting and certifying underground utility location data. For example, Colorado and Montana mandate ASCE 75 compliant as-installeds be submitted  for completed public construction projects. Understanding the equipment used to gather information and the reliability of that technique in that particular project situation is the responsibility of the person putting their sign and seal on the data. Assigning quality levels compliant with ASCE 75 requires sign off by a professional engineer.

Among the attributes required by ASCE 75 are several that define data quality for different utility feature types.  The horizontal and vertical datums shall be managed and exchanged at the record level using the horizontal spatial reference and vertical spatial
reference elements in the framework for data exchange;

• Horizontal spatial reference: Coordinate system, datum, associated with the X and Y coordinates
• Vertical spatial reference: Datum and geoid model for the Z coordinate
• Horizontal accuracy: Error of horizontal coordinates at the 95% confidence level
• Vertical accuracy: Accuracy level of vertical coordinates at the 95% confidence level
• Accuracy units Units: used to express horizontal and vertical positional accuracies.

During construction or when underground utility infrastructure is subsequently exposed, the horizontal and vertical coordinate observations are obtained at each distinct feature; at horizontal bends, vertical bends, and points of deflection; and along each distinct feature with sufficient interval frequency to achieve the required Positional Accuracy Level.

The Horizontal Accuracy and Vertical Accuracy requirements help determine the type of data collection equipment and data collection methodology. Different Positional Accuracy Levels are possible when using global navigation satellite system (GNSS) equipment and real-time kinematic (RTK) methods, post-processed mapping GNSS equipment, and mapping GNSS equipment without post processing. The combined effect of the characteristics of the positioning equipment, data collection procedures, and postprocessing support a specific statement of accuracy. For example, equipment and data collection and post-processing procedures that are designed to achieve a 3 ft Positional Accuracy Level cannot be used to certify an accuracy smaller than 3 ft.

Product-as-a-Service:a paradigm shift in low cost access to advanced underground mapping technology

Gyro or inertial mapping provides an effective technical solution to the challenge of accurately mapping underground utility infrastructure. Gyro mapping solutions are available for any type of underground utility including water, gas, electric power, communications, ducts, and wastewater. Using this technology it is possible to map networks of pipes or ducts with diameters ranging from 29-34 mm to 90-1500 mm for distances of up to 2 km. Solutions are being offered globally by quite a large number of service providers.

Product-as-a-Service (PaaS)

Gyro mapping is perceived to be expensive because it is currently offered in a very inefficient manner with high mobilization and de-mobilization costs. Whereas the reality is that that if you provide the service efficiently gyro mapping has a price advantage over other technologies. That is why we're introducing the Product-as-a-Service (PaaS) concept which represents a true paradigm shift in how gyro mapping is offered.  

Erratic per unit pricing, which is actually the norm in the mapping industry, is a problem that inhibits new advanced mapping technologies like gyro mapping technology from competing more effectively with traditional underground mapping methods such as GNSS. The way pricing currently works is that service providers ask a fixed rate for a day's work. The fixed cost covers mobilization, de-mobilization, the crew, the equipment, the planning, and the actual mapping. But the actual amount of mapping conducted may vary from a very small portion of the daily rate to virtually all of it. As a result a crew is often inefficiently deployed because the volume of mapping is fairly low, but it still takes a day. As an example, a service provider whose standard rate is $3000 per day is requested to come in and do a 300 foot mapping. That translates into an effective of cost of $10 per foot, which is very expensive. On the other hand if they had mapped 1,500 feet that day the average cost would have been $2 per foot.

 

Enabling the efficient delivery of gyro mapping services requires two things; reducing mobilization and demobilization rates and a pricing model that reflects the amount of subsurface mapping actually conducted.

The solution is to bring the technology closer to the job sites to reduce mobilization and de-mobilization costs and to adopt a pricing model that more accurately reflects the amount of gyro mapping that is actually performed.

The foundation of Product-as-a-Service (PaaS), is that Reduct makes its equipment available to the service provider free of charge.  On its side the service provider commits to conducting a certain amount of underground mapping using gyro technology per year. The service provider either conducts the underground mapping work itself or subcontracts a contractor, engineering firm, or surveyor to conduct the pre-construction survey work. In either case the service provider provides the Reduct gyro mapping equipment used in mapping the location of underground utilities. 

Of course this will require that a lot more service provider people (or your subcontractor's people) be trained in gyro mapping to perform this work. But you no longer need to travel half way around the world to acquire Reduct training. Reduct have set up the Reduct Academy where you can find video-enabled training packages for all of our tools, how to assemble them, operate them, process the data, and generate the 3D models.

Transparent competitive pricing

PaaS makes pricing transparent and enables gyro mapping to be offered competitively to traditional technologies. Service providers can provide prices to their customers based on the rates that Reduct charges for the PaaS service. PaaS rates are simply a balance between the value of the equipment that we provide and the feet of subsurface mapping that is committed by the service provider.

A key benefit of the Product-as-a-Service concept is that it provides for complete flexibility in your choice of equipment. PaaS allows you to select, exchange or return technology depending on your current requirements. Because the technology is provided free of charge you have complete flexibility in choosing the equipment you want to use.  Reduct hardware solutions are available right now for pretty much every type of utility including water, gas, electric power, communications, ducts, and wastewater and for a wide range of pipe and duct diameters ranging from 29-34 mm to 90-1500 mm for distances of up to 2 km.  The pipe or duct can be any material and any shape; round, rectangular or X -shaped. 

Here's some practical examples of the advantages of full flexibility. We supply you with an ABM-30 for an inch and a quarter data duct, and an ABM-90 or a DR-4 for doing larger diameter pipes - anything up to 500 millimetres. Now, if you commit to mapping a hundred thousand feet with those two units on an annual basis, then you will be charged 52 cents per foot for mapping done using this equipment. That is a flat rate, it doesn't matter which of the two units you use. There is zero investment risk because tools are exchanged and replaced as they become obsolete.

Now if your projects change and your latest job requires that you map a 210,000 foot pipe, you find you need to upgrade your ABM-90 to a DR-4. Your rate per foot drops to 27 cents because on the one hand, you have a slightly more expensive tool, but you have a lot more volume. So your rate goes down to 27 cents.

For service provider's people in the field the benefit of the PaaS model is full hardware flexibility and transparent, competitive pricing.

Cloud-based services

We've also set up cloud-based services, where your experts can monitor everything that happens to all the tools that are within your portfolio without needing to be on site. With that online service, you can see performance statistics, quality statistics of the tool such as spread and length scaling, that give a very good indication of how well the tool was pulled through the pipe and how accurate the result is likely to be.

You can centralize all the activities that are happening, reporting, quality control and other activities. You can monitor the quality of an individual tool or of an individual operator. For example, if an operator is performing less efficiently than another operator with the same equipment or if you detect data quality issues with a particular operator, you may consider giving some remedial training or monitoring specific operators more closely.

Reduct community

We have created a community of Reduct users. Within that community, we have pipeline owners, service providers, and service partners. Service partners are people and organizations with relationships to Reduct.  For example, they are a local place where you can go to exchange your tools or have them re calibrated. So every region will have service partners.The community will be a place where you can basically interact with your partners or your service providers.  If, for example, you have a very interesting reporting template for a certain customer, which is very specific, and you know other people could benefit from that, you can offer it through the community.

This sums up the new concept we call Product-as-a-Service, or PaaS that provides a way to bring gyro mapping into the mainstream technologies, just like any of the other ones.

Implications for introducing other advanced technologies

We believe that this approach has implications for subsurface mapping in general, because it provides a way for other new advanced subsurface mapping technologies to be offered into the market competitively with traditional mapping technologies.

 

This post is based on Otto Ballintijn's (Reduct) talk at Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

 

Real time reality capture during construction key to digitizing the entire construction workflow

Utility construction is booming globally. Almost half a trillion annual investment in capital across all the main verticals, electric, natural gas and telecom has resulted in capital investment with construction with as high as 4% growth. On top of this in the U.S. there is the recent $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Utilities are facing business drivers that are motivating them to improve the productivity of their business processes and improve data quality especially the locational accuracy of assets to provide a near real-time digital twin of their assets.  These drivers include an aging work force, the replacement of older workers by younger less experienced workers, a reliable near real-time GIS as the foundation for a smart grid, and a rapidly evolving utility business model that changes utility priorities.

Current legacy workflows

The current construction workflow for utilities is a highly inefficient, manual process a lot of which hasn't changed in 40 years. Actual construction, the middle and key part of this workflow, has remained a paper based process that has remained mostly unchanged for over 40 years now. Construction crews typically use paper job packets to locate the job site, and document any as-built changes to the job. They use the paper job packets, work order sketch, or any other piece of paper in the folder to record any required attribute information about the assets being installed. As construction activities increase and newer downstream analysis systems are brought online, such as an outage management system (OMS) system or an advanced distribution management system (ADMS), the data collection requirements grow, adding additional burdens on the construction crews. These crews work in difficult of conditions on difficult, time consuming tasks, but are still asked to record all of the required information on paper. The paperwork is prone to delays in processing at each stage of the workflow cycle. This antiquated paper-based collection of work order completion data results in mounds of paperwork from the field with all the attendant issues of hand written notes. The GIS analysts receiving these paper work packets have to try to sift out reliable data from these paper records. The result is that the data that actually gets into the GIS often is missing, inaccurate, or out of date.  Backlogs of months are not uncommon.

Real time data collection enables digitizing the entire construction workflow

Locusview has developed a digital construction management platform that digitizes the entire workflow process. It is designed with the construction crews needs in mind, matches their workflows, and simplifies their data collection tasks. Work order data is collected via a mobile application using smart forms, high-accuracy GPS, and barcode scanners. Data can be immediately accessed by the back office staff, in real time. This two-way communication can be used to resolve design changes that require due to field conditions, thus reducing invoice and billing delays.

Locusview Mobile integrated with high-accuracy GNSS receivers and barcode scanners eliminates manual data entry. Data forms are displayed based on pre-configured industry-specific data model rules using complex conditionality alongside smart forms.  Simultaneously back office managers use Locusview Web to gain real time field visibility, enabling project progress tracking, real time validations, contractor auditing, and smart alerts, ensuring compliance with safety, regulatory requirements and work processes since all stakeholders, field crews, contractors, supervisors, project managers, and inspectors are collaborating on the same job using a single platform. This fully digitized process reduces the time and effort typically required of construction crews to document their field activities, expedites and standardizes field data collection, and improves data integrity creating the foundation for a high fidelity digital twin.

A key metric we track is the as-built backlog. That's the time it takes to enter as-built data into GIS after completion of construction. That's only one part of closeout, but it's an important part.  Our customers are reporting a 70% reduction in their as-built backlogs. They are also reporting 20 % less time spent in the field. Furthermore they are seeing 50% cost savings in data collection because they're enabling field crews, people that are already out in the field, to collect this high quality data with high-accuracy GNSS devices and barcode scanners avoiding the necessity of hiring outside survey crews. This translates into better capex efficiency, putting more assets in the ground per dollar of CAPEX spend and Increased customer service, something very important for competitive industries as telecom.

This simplified data collection process is designed to fully integrate with downstream utility applications as well. The job closeout process using Locusview has been reduced from 8 months to 3 days. As a concrete example a very manual piece of the closeout process, the material reconciliation piece, has been reduced from 7 hours to 12 minutes.

Real time data collection benefits all stakeholders

Many stakeholders are involved in the the complete construction work order cycle; contractors built the job, GIS analysts updated their maps based on as-builts submitted by the construction crew, operations imports the GIS data and operates their Outage Management System (OMS), planning and engineering use GIS and other asset information to plan for future growth. The work management system uses the data to initiate, manage and closeout the work order process for each job.

In addition there are a number of "forgotten" user personas that use and need accurate data from the field. The finance and corporate accounting groups rely on data in the system of record to be highly accurate and reflect the most current state of the utilities assets. Utilities go to the bond and stock markets on a regular basis to borrow funds to build and maintain their utility systems. And potential lenders or investors rely on the accurate valuation of the company. Interest rates charged by those investors correspond directly to the health of the utility and impact the cost of funds. If the work order update processes are delayed by 2 to 6 months, then the system of record is misleading and the lenders or investors may question the financial health of the utility. In addition, delayed closeout of work in the work management system will result in increased cost of funds charges to the work order via extended construction work in progress (CWIP) and allowance for funds used during construction (AFUDC) charges that are on all of the open work orders. CWIP and AFUDC is a common practice for accounting for the cost of funds in the United States and it's a concept that's gaining momentum here in Canada as well. Also many local governments apply property tax assessments on utilities for the utility assets within their municipality. If the system of record is not up to date, then the property tax assessments will also be incorrect. Contract and management organizations also rely on the accurate and timely reporting of work completed by contractor crews, as well as, closing out of the invoicing process. Delays in documenting completed work in the field will result in delayed invoicing by the contractors for the services that they've provided to the utility.

Conclusion

The key is real-time reality capture, that gets you the benefit of driving a digital twin into utilities by capturing the most accurate, high-fidelity data at the most opportune time during construction, not afterwards where you're mapping a scar. Furthermore it's a unified solution standardizing construction data collection real time across utility and contractor crews.

 

This post is based on Danny Petrecca's and Robert Schultz's (Locusview) talk at Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Automated feature recognition helps democratize utility mapping for producing infrastructure digital twins

In jurisdictions worldwide the low quality of underground location data has been identified as a top cause of underground utility damage. Existing underground utility data, most of which is stored in network owners' records, is often inaccurate, out of date or simply missing.  In North America in a survey of 402 locate professionals better facility maps received nearly unanimous agreement as a top strategy for improving the efficiency and quality of locates.  Singapore's Digital Underground project is unequivocal about the economic and social impact of low quality underground location data stating that "virtually all stakeholders are aware that much of the available information is unreliable and that this has repeatedly led to losses of time, money and opportunities."

Challenges facing the utility mapping industry

The root cause of the low quality of underground utility data is how utility mapping is structured as an industry. The primary activities of the utility mapping industry are data collection and how we keep and share this data with other parties.

Data collection

The way we collect is slowly changing, but predominantly we're still using traditional survey and locate methods. The survey methodology we are using hasn't changed in a hundred years. It's a very time and materials based, manual and analog process. Survey processes are slow and expensive to execute and require specialized equipment and skill sets, and safety is a big concern.

Locating underground utilities is one of the biggest causes of delays in construction schedules, service disruptions are a common occurrence, safety is always a major concern. and locate operations are slow to execute. Accuracy and timeliness are major issues. Locate operations require specialized equipment and skill sets which restricts locators to a small number of industry insiders.  A major shortfall is that underground utility location data is rarely available during the crucial planning and design stages of civil engineering projects.

Democratization of utility mapping

The utility mapping industry needs some fundamental changes. We need to move away from the monopoly that exists right now. There is just a handful of companies that are able to go out and collect underground utility data. We need to democratize data collection so that many more people can collect this data, targeting a crowd sourced approach and enabling multiple creators or collectors providing this data. This distributes the responsibility for the data as well. The more distributed the responsibilities, the lower risk and the lower the cost of failures will be.

We also need to change the skill level required. With current technology, we should be able to automate much of routine locating and thus enable many more people to do it. Using inexpensive technology will lower the cost of collecting and aggregating locate data. As data becomes lower cost to capture, data retention will become less expensive which will encourage people to retain the location data they acquire rather than simply painting/marking the ground and not capturing the data digitally.

Democratization is the real future of 3D infrastructure mapping. Right now data is still very siloed. We'll always have the traditional mapping companies, survey companies, line locating companies and asset owners going out and collecting their own data. But through crowdsourcing data from routine day to day locating and mapping, infrastructure projects, and other sources, aggregating that data and distributing access to that data is how utility mapping will really come to the forefront.  It should be easy to upload data into a central register where it can be made accessible to multiple stakeholders. Compliance with Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards provides a basis for full interoperability enabling open access to every single conduit, cable, pipe, or other piece of infrastructure in real time from your phone, your tablet, your laptop or other applications.

Infrastructure digital twin

We think the best paradigm for producing and capturing asset data is through collecting it into an infrastructure digital twin. Digital twins have made a lot of progress in a variety of industries. Most importantly, for the utility mapping industry, it should be noted that creating a digital twin is much easier than it was even just a few years ago. We think the time is right for an infrastructure digital twin and it can be just at the asset level for one particular company, but we believe it should be at a regional level. Cities, municipalities and regional governments around the world are beginning to develop comprehensive digital twins of all of their physical infrastructure; buildings, roads, trees, power lines, and subsurface utilities and they're pouring resources into it.

And we think that Canada and the United States should start doing the same thing. And for us in the utility industry, data collection costs are lower than they ever have been. There's clearly interest among stakeholders and governments to start dealing with infrastructure and utility mapping problems, particularly to lower the number and costs of strikes, injuries and the loss of life. We now know a lot more about how to create data from other data sets, using different types of analysis and artificial intelligence to piece disparate data sets together. Using AI machine learning in the cloud is much less inexpensive compared to just a few years ago. And nowadays one of the things that makes infrastructure digital twins readily accessible to the utility industry is the fact that storing huge volumes of data in the cloud has become very inexpensive.

What is infrastructure digital twin ? First of all, a digital twin needs to result in effective action. It's not just enough say we have a digital twin philosophy The purpose of having a digital twin is to result in effective action that improves your business. It needs to use real time and historical data, which is paramount for us in the utility mapping industry, and it's going to be motivated by outcomes. For us in the utility industry, it is to reduce and even eliminate utility strikes during construction and the associated risks of injuries and fatalities.

The infrastructure digital twin has to be stored and managed in a relational database so it can be queried, analyzed and improved on through time, and related to other data sets. Processes for collecting data and maintaining data must be simple so that we can break the barrier of restricting underground utility mapping to a specialized group of people. If we truly want to democratize and compile data from disparate data sets, we need very simple processes to get data into the database, analyzed and maintained.

An infrastructure digital twin should be captured and maintained in 3D, even though most utilities in the ground are within just a couple of meters of the top of the ground. The 3D component is vital, because part of analyzing a data set is that much ancillary data is 3D such as overhead power lines that come down the side of a pole into conduits below the ground,

Imagery that's taken looking straight down at the ground, like traditional satellite imagery, can be visualized on a map and incorporated directly into a GIS database. But other types of imagery such as oblique, 360-degree, street-side, and inspection imagery need to be treated differently.  Oriented Imagery has a range of possible applications. For example, a construction company might use it to review asset inventory photos taken by field workers at a construction site. A telecom company or electric utility would use it to examine close range inspection images of electrical and telecom towers from many different angles. Oriented imagery applications enable you to see exactly where the image is on the map as you pan or zoom in the image. There are spatial navigation tools designed to work specifically with oriented imagery. You can query oriented images using spatial and temporal filters.

Finally, it is very important to have standardized formats, including storage formats and cloud formats.  It improves our ability to inexpensively use machine learning to do associative analyses of disparate data sets to make a larger, more conflated data sets.

Automated feature extraction

Maintaining accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive data about assets, above ground and below ground, has been a challenge for utilities for decades. Now new technologies including machine learning are being applied to automate real-time maintenance of utility network information and provide a foundation for infrastructure digital twins.

Automated feature extraction has advanced dramatically in the last few years.  This is an example where high density LiDAR and ultra high resolution imagery was used on a very low, very small diameter gas distribution install from an open trench. You can clearly see the ease with which the LiDAR produces a 3D representation of all of the local utility infrastructure.

Much of the the advancement in in automated 3D mapping have derived from the autonomous vehicle industry which have trickled down to other parts of the GIS industry.  The hardware and software are vastly easier to use and produce vastly better data. You can see from these ortho images collected from our system and the LiDAR overlaid on it. Feature extraction was used to automatically define top of pipe, top of ditch and actual joints in the pipe. Automated classification of LiDAR removes the need for someone to go out there with a Pogo stick and find the top of pipe. It makes it possible to simply drive alongside and scan with a mobile LiDAR system an open trench containing a newly installed pipe to produce a detailed 3D model with centimetre accuracy without having a person present. It is much safer - no boots on the pavement - and it drastically reduces the cost.

We prefer mobile mapping systems as opposed to handhelds because mobile mapping systems produce a tremendous amount more data and its registration tends to be vastly superior. It is much safer because it eliminates a need for someone to get out of a vehicle - so no boots on the pavement. Anytime you're still getting out, whether you're using handhold laser handhold mapping system, or a Pogo stick, you still have a person outside the vehicle walking around a street. With a mobile system you eliminate that risk, and you also drastically decrease the time required to do the collection. Here is another example where automated feature extraction was used to identify the electro fused coupling. You can see the butt joints, you can see the Ts and so forth. All this can be done very simply now with automated feature extraction.

Data registers

While surveyors may have had experience with a provincial or other types of survey register, utility location data identified during routine locate (one call) operations in general is only used to mark the ground and is rarely recorded, digitally or otherwise. Practically this means locators going back to the same location they were at just a few weeks ago to repeat the locate operation for another project. People in the locate industry are very familiar with this and the  amount of schedule and cost expense it causes. Exposing people to relocate or remap an area that was just done not too long ago is doubling their risk. Secondly, because the data is not retained or kept in easily accessible ways, we can't analyze it.  For example, we might want to confirm that we have correctly identified the type of utility, the accuracy of its location, or determine if there have been changes in its location, type, or current status since we last detected it. And because the data is not being retained and centrally managed at a global level or at a large scale level, there's no real opportunity for organic data enhancements or improvements.

The CGA Next Practices Report to Industry has made the case that a comprehensive national GIS map of buried infrastructure is among the opportunities for systemic improvement with the greatest ROI for industry. The benefits of a national register are greater safety, enhanced construction efficiency; reduced design, construction, and maintenance costs; greater regulatory compliance; improved locate efficiency; fewer project delays and budget overruns; fewer service disruptions to the public, less traffic disruptions and loss of custom and other inconveniences for the public.

Sharing maps of underground infrastructure is not totally new to Canada. For example, the City of Calgary's Joint Utility Mapping Project (JUMP) system, the ICI Society in British Columbia, the City of Toronto's Digital Map Owners Group (DMOG) and others have been sharing underground utility information for years.

The Canadian Underground Infrastructure Register (CUIR) is a new national initiative started at the beginning of the year. The CUIR initiative is intended to enhance current practices in a way that enables all stakeholder groups to benefit from the initiative; construction contractors, network owners, government transportation agencies, design engineers, subsurface utility engineering (SUE) engineers, surveyors, locators, workers in the field and the public. The CUIR initiative has been inspired by the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) project currently being implemented in the UK. The objective of NUAR is to develop a register of location data for all underground infrastructure in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that is accessible to all network owners and government agencies.

This post is based on Joseph Hlady's (Lux Modus) talk at Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Combining traditional data with advanced GPR provides a complete picture of the subsurface

When we look at some of the major projects that have gone sideways, it often can be attributed to the lack of planning for underground infrastructure. This is a global issue and we know that the best way to manage the risk from underground infrastructure is to map it before construction begins. For example, the Sydney light rail project in Australia was problematic with a serious budget overrun because there was so many underground unknowns discovered during construction. Another example is a hospital project where what was thought to be a complete inventory of underground utilities missed a 20 inch gas pipe and a six inch gas pipe that were encountered on the project site during construction.  Neither was documented and they were not on the asset owner's records. The challenge is to find these assets before construction in the early stages of planning and design so as to be able to mitigate any project impacts and safety concerns. Very few major projects move forward without an environmental investigation and a geotechnical investigation, so it's not clear why there's resistance to doing a subsurface utility investigation when the immediate risk to the project and the public is considerably higher.

Legacy data

Legacy data is often proprietary asset owners' "as-planned" engineering records. Relying solely on these legacy utility asset records for location information is unreliable, but augmented by GPR and other remote sensing data they provide valuable information.

Modern GIS also cannot be relied on to always provide reliable data. This image is from a GIS with an xref in the background. The middle of the street is where the asset owner believes the water line to be, but a subsurface survey actually found lines on the top and the bottom side of the street, which is nowhere near the placement according to the asset owner's records.

Even more disconcerting is that some asset owners have stopped updating their records. In one example we encountered, the last update and revision to a telecom owner's documents was in 1998. Obviously by 2022, we know there's a lot more utilities added into these streets.

The challenge for practitioners is how to find this information.  Fortunately, advanced technologies, such as multi-channel, multi frequency ground penetrating radar, can augment the available legacy and EM data to provide a complete, accurate and current picture of the subsurface.

Underground locating combining traditional and advanced techniques

At DGT Associates our typical workflow starts with collecting and compiling legacy maps.  We collect all legacy data that is relevant including client information and all the asset owners' maps. We add our institutional knowledge from decades of experience with construction in the particular region where we're working. We then perform our traditional EM pipe locating and add that data to the legacy data we have compiled. Together this provides the background for our ground penetrating radar scanning.

Advanced ground penetrating radar

This is a picture of DGT Associates' new ground penetrating radar setup, a drivable rig with a mobile mapping unit. This is a 24 channel system, so it captures 24 slices every time we scan. It is also a multi frequency system. Low frequencies penetrate deeper with less resolution, while higher frequencies have better resolution but don't penetrate as deeply. This system can collect about 10 miles of data per day with 24 channels for a total of 240 miles of GPR data.  With Boston's soil conditions this system is collecting vertical slices down to about 8 feet. In addition with multiple frequencies we are simultaneously collecting horizontal slices. 

Value of GPR in subsurface surveys

GPR is not magic and is not replacing any of the previous techniques. What is the value of including advanced GPR in locating and mapping subsurface utilities ? The first thing is safety. With our rig we do not require boots on the pavement.  Secondly we get fast data collection compared to traditional locating. Thirdly, we can determine depths with GPR really well. When we see the top of the pipe, we're able to trace it in the cross section. GPR is also good at confirming the location of facilities shown on legacy maps or detected by EM. But GPR can't see everything, For example, we often can see a trench where there is likely a utility even if we can't see the actual pipe or cable. We typically need to determine from other techniques, legacy drawings or EM scanning, what type of utility we are seeing. 

A major strength of GPR is finding unknowns. Going through the depth slices, we can see each one of the lines representing a utility. The type of utility is derived from legacy and EM maps and is colour coded according to the standard with blue being water, orange telecom, purple unknown, and so on. Something that's really striking in this GPR scan is the purple utility buried only a foot and a half deep, crossing diagonally across the street. Nobody knew about this utility before we went out and scanned it with the GPR.

GPR data showing rectangular pits

One of the best examples of how combining GPR with legacy data enables us to detect unknown utilities, determine what they are and confirm they are still present is in Cambridge. We had compiled comprehensive legacy background information before we went out to do a complete GPR scan of the site.  Among the things we found were these unique rectangular pits, shown as purple circles (colour coded for unknown). Each pit is about one foot by two feet wide, and they're regularly spaced at 12 feet. If all we had was the GPR data, we would have no idea what these were.

Background legacy data revealing abandoned gas pipe

But because we had the legacy background maps, we were able to see that these pits line up  with old legacy data showing an abandoned gas pipe. Without the background map, we would have had no idea what the GPR scan was showing. The GPR scan confirmed the location of the abandoned gas pipe and showed that it was still there.

A typical subsurface survey deliverable is colour coded according to American Public Works colour coding. All of the lines are annotated to conform to the ASCE 38-02 quality standard. Every line is represented not only by its annotations for reliability, but also includes the number of conduits and other measures of capacity, and asset owner information. Together it provides as complete a picture of the underground assets for the project site as can be assembled from existing data.

Conclusion

The light rail in Sydney went from a $2 billion to a $3 billion job because of the lack of a comprehensive subsurface survey during planning and early design. There's plenty of proof including ROI studies that there are very good reasons to use SUE surveys. There are good practitioners all over the world who can carry out subsurface surveys. Just as with above ground surveys knowing accurately the location of underground utilities and other infrastructure enables good designs because you can make informed decisions based on information collected by professionals who know what is underground and where it is.

What we see in the coming years is that subsurface surveying is going to become even a bigger business and it's going to become more lucrative. We expect to see more practitioners and more investment in innovative technologies for detecting and mapping underground utilities.

This post is based on Mitchell Lidell's & Michael Twohig's (DGT Associates) talk at the Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Accurately locating and mapping utility infrastructure underwater

In New Jersey there was a $320 million project to replace a bridge connecting Stafford Township to Long Beach Island. There are many utilities involved including telecom, Comcast, water and sewer, and electric and conduits. They have carried out a SUE survey prior to construction to try to determine where the utilities are and have also come up with mitigation plans to reduce risk. 

However there was a complication. They need to build a new drain line because there has been increased flooding during the rainy season and also because of high tides. It is planned to build the drain line into the water parallel and fairly close to an existing water main. But the water main that provides water to the island runs under water and all they had for locating the water line was an "as-planned" map from the water company engineering department, which is not reliable data. Cross-boring into the water main would leave the whole island without water. Traditional locating equipment, such EMI and GPR, cannot be used under water so an alternative locating technology was required. 

PRISUM Technologies provides a technology called inertial navigation technology, gyro mapping or inertial measuring unit (IMU) that relies on a battery powered autonomous probe with on-board gyroscopes, accelerometers, and odometers. The mapping tool records changes in direction and speed at a hundred samples per second (every foot) to create an accurate, high frequency 3D profile of the pipe segment being traversed. Inertial mapping avoids the major limitations of surface-based EM and GPR techniques; it is not sensitive to soil conditions and extraneous electromagnetic noise, is water resistant, works with all types of pipe materials and is safe because it does not require boots on the pavement. It can map sewer and water mains, electric power or telecom conduits, gas and oil of any material, plastic or metal.  Pipe diameter can range from an inch and a quarter to 30 inches. The key to the technology is that the IMU is completely autonomous. There is no tethered cable and it does not communicate a signal to above ground equipment. All the data is stored within itself.  Basically it is comprised of a battery, memory and various inertial devices such as accelerometers and odometers in a compact device that can be pulled or pushed through a pipe or conduit. Once the IMU tool has been run through the pipe or duct, it is removed from the pipe and connected to a laptop to download and process the data.  The output is a report and a CSV file or a standard GIS format such as a shape file. Because of its autonomous nature, it can map utilities which are going under rivers or other obstructions, even a hundred feet or deeper. The IMU tool has the capability to map up to 5,000 feet recording X,Y and depth every one foot.  To georeference the collected data, accurate GPS coordinates are recorded at the insertion point and and at the end point.  With that information the entire path the autonomous unit travelled can be determined. 

In New Jersey the IMU was inserted in one end of the water pipe and pushed through to the other end and then pulled back.  This was repeated providing four runs. The data from the four runs showed a high degree of repeatability providing confidence in the accuracy of the data. According to the New Jersey DOT, the locating standard tolerance is plus or minus 2.74 feet horizontal and 1.09 feet in depth. The 3D mapping data collected by the IMU was much more accurate, 0.26 ft in XY, and 0.3 ft in Z.

This project entailed a one day activity where we were able to both run the IMU tool through the water main collecting data and also process and show the results to the New Jersey DOT on the same day. The overall operation time for the IMU run was two hours.

It was found that the water main actually had been installed at an angle.  If the team had not had the accurate location from the gyro mapping run, shown by the the red line, they would have risked cross-boring into the water main with major consequences for the project and the island's water supply. With the accurate location of the water main in hand, the team went back to the drawing board and redesigned the new drain line ensuring a safe separation from the water main.

This post is based on Santosh Saride's talk at the Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Developing a subsurface digital twin for Singapore requires data quality management

Singapore has severely limited land, but unlimited space and has started to build many types of activities underground to save the land above ground for the better living of citizens. Many of the traditional utilities such as electric power, water, wastewater and others, as well new type of utilities, such as the Pneumatic Waste Conveyance System are almost one hundred percent underground. Parts of the transportation network, such as the metro, are also underground.  In addition some storage, waste disposal and national defence facilities are underground.

Data quality

As underground development expands in Singapore reliable data about the location of underground infrastructure becomes increasingly essential. Data quality is a huge issue. Virtually all stakeholders are aware that much of the available information is unreliable and that this has repeatedly led to losses of time, money and opportunities.  From the perspective of planning and land administration, infrastructure development, and planning and design there are important benefits in the form of reduced uncertainty and risks to be derived from reliable underground data.  These include reduced costs, avoiding unnecessary rework, minimizing destruction to the environment, avoiding disruption of consumer services, and greater safety for people working in the environment as well as the general public in general.

To address this issue the Digital Underground (DU) initiative was started in 2017. The objective of DU is to develop a reliable map of Singapore's subsurface infrastructure for planning and land administration. The DU has four phases. The objective of Phase 1 was to identify the problem and create a road map. The second phase involved looking into what was required to create a utility mapping ecosystem. The current phase involves looking at the underground utility workflow which has many components that will contribute towards reliable data.  The final phase is the operational phase when we implement a new utility mapping ecosystem.

In Phase 1 an assessment was made of the reliability (locational accuracy, completeness, and currency) of the existing data. It was concluded that the data quality of the data is seriously deficient. In terms of location, it is  inaccurate, much of it is out of date, and it is also incomplete. It was also found that the quality level of the data is undefined, in other words, no quality level has been assigned to each facility for example based on a quality standard like ASCE 38 or PAS 128. We do not know which piece of data is of higher quality or which piece of data is sufficiently reliable to be relied on for planning and land administration.

Road map for improving data quality

Addressing data quality involves fundamental survey, locating and mapping issues. In addition to assessing data quality an objective of Phase 1 was to develop a road map for addressing the data quality issue. First we wanted to ensure that going forward data for all newly installed utilities would be reliable. In 2017 we implemented a strategy requiring certified survey quality as-builts. Secondly, we started to look for opportunities to improve the data quality of existing below ground infrastructure. We are looking at several new technologies, such as ground penetrating radar and gyro mapping for detecting underground utilities and LiDAR and photogrammetric capture with a smart phone of trial trenches. We are also exploring ways of capturing not just vector data, but integrating 3D point cloud data of an open trial trench in our GIS so the next person interested in this section of road doesn't have to open up the trench to see what's there.

A key part of the road map is governance, especially accountability and transparency; assigning responsibilities for data capture, data quality improvement, and data quality management. We want to introduce a new framework so that we can ensure high quality utility data ongoing in the future. We are suggesting a process that would not interrupt or change the current utility workflow, but add a new data quality workflow on top of the current workflow. Asset owners will be able to continue to do their work the way they have in the past, but will be required to submit their data to a Data Quality Hub for quality control to ensure that data quality standards are complied with. We intend to implement quality control on the front end when data is submitted to the database, not at the tail end of the information supply chain. Eventually this process is intended to ensure that we are getting reliable and high quality data that can be shared back again to the end user, the planners and land administrators.

Community of practice

Creating a utility mapping ecosystem requires buy in from network owners, transportation agencies, excavators, and others. The Digital Underground Connect is a platform where we provide people to meet, to learn and to improve.

 

This post is based on Victor Khoo's talk on the Singapore Digital Underground Project at the Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF).

Achieving high quality underground infrastructure location data requires accountability

In many jurisdictions worldwide the low quality of underground infrastructure location data has been identified as a top cause of underground utility damage. Existing underground data, most of which is stored in network owners' utility records, is inaccurate, out of date or simply missing.  In North America in a survey of 402 locate professionals better facility maps received nearly unanimous agreement as a top strategy for improving the efficiency and quality of locates.  Singapore's Digital Underground project is unequivocal about the impact of low quality underground location data stating that "virtually all stakeholders are aware that much of the available information is unreliable and that this has repeatedly led to losses of time, money and opportunities." 

Achieving high quality underground infrastructure location data

Singapore

Recognizing the economic and societal impact of inaccurate, outdated and incomplete maps of underground infrastructure, Singapore Land Authority's Digital Underground Project has created a new data governance initiative designed to improve data quality and provide the basis for a national authoritative single source of truth.  Chief among its provisions is the creation of a national Data Quality Hub comprised of a consolidated underground infrastructure database maintained by data flows which enforce data quality management.  Specifically the Data Quality Hub requires all newly captured data on subsurface utilities to undergo quality control based on a defined set of rules before the data is eligible to be included in the database.

North America

According to a recent report from the Next Practices Initiative of the Common Ground Alliance the damage prevention industry has reached an inflection point. For more than half a decade, the rate of damage to underground infrastructure in North America has increased or remained stagnant. The North American one call system has become highly inefficient and industry confidence in the system has been eroded, resulting in a process that has stalled and is not achieving its primary goal of reducing damage to underground infrastructure.

Utility company records comprise the vast majority of the data we have about underground utilities. Much of this data is inaccurate, out of date or simply missing (especially in the case of abandoned infrastructure and infrastructure without a known owner). It is estimated that over $10 billion is spent annually in locating underground utilities and other infrastructure. Most of this is routine locate operations conducted by locators in response to a one call request, but it includes locate operations such as hydro vac services contracted by excavators. Most of this newly acquired data is not recorded or shared. 

To begin to address this crisis by taking positive steps to reduce the frequency and severity of underground strikes in June, 2021 the Infrastructure Health & Safety Association (IHSA) initiated a utility strike Root Cause Analysis and evaluation workshop.  The workshop focused on identifying the primary causal factors of underground strikes. Based on this analysis the group identified five key industry systemic weaknesses that were responsible for underground utility strikes. The workshop made several recommendations to address these systemic weaknesses.

Data quality responsibility

Among the key industry systemic weaknesses identified by the IHSA was lack of accountability.  An essential part of any conversation about data is who is responsible for each data element. When a data source reports that the accuracy of the location of a cable or pipe is within a half a meter horizontally and a meter vertically, I need to know who captured the data, when, with what type of  equipment was used (metadata) and most importantly who took responsibility for the data by signing off for it. If it came from a SUE survey signed by a professional engineer, I will have greater confidence in it than if the data was sourced from utility records with no professional taking responsibility. Furthermore, metadata and a sign-off by a professional enables an informed conversation about whether the newly acquired data is better and should replace the existing record.

One of the things that needs to be clarified in the context of underground infrastructure location data is the roles of locators, professional surveyors and engineers, network operators, and one call centres in collecting and certifying data. For example, Colorado and Montana require as-builts from recently completed public construction projects to be signed off by a professional. In most jurisdictions SUE surveys also must be signed off by a professional. Understanding the equipment used to gather information and the reliability of that technique in that particular project situation is the responsibility of the person putting their sign and seal on the data. To choose and assign the appropriate coordinate system requires a professional surveyor who will also tie that decision in with with the existing project-level coordinates or survey coordinates and make sure it all fits together for the overall project. Assigning quality levels compliant with the ASCE 38 and CSA S-250 here in Canada requires sign off by a professional engineer. In North America professional land surveyors and professional engineers carry insurance that is designed specifically for them in the case of liabilities.

Achieving a high data quality level for existing infrastructure requires upgrading the quality of the huge volume of existing data. Accurate as-builts and SUE surveys will play an important role, but given the huge volume of data, it seems clear that utility owners, locators, municipalities and one call centres will have an essential role to play in upgrading the quality of the data we hold about existing infrastructure. To enable this to happen two recommendations of the IHSA Root Cause initiative are relevant. 

• Identify roles and responsibilities to promote accountability among employers, supervisors, and workers as well as Ontario One Call, utility owners and municipalities.
• Review and enhance practices, procedures and regulations to foster accountability including policies, procedures, and regulations relating to the completion and review of locates prior to excavating and the overall planning and execution of work in the vicinity of underground utilities.

The CGA Next Practices Initiative makes a strong case that a centralized national map of underground infrastructure accessible all construction stakeholders provides systemic benefits with a large ROI for the construction industry. It represents a large opportunity to accurately locate and record location data for the millions of miles of existing underground infrastructure. To do this efficiently will require new and innovative technology for locating existing underground infrastructure, capturing and sharing underground infrastructure information. More importantly it will require policies, procedures, and regulations to promote accountability among everyone involved in locating underground infrastructure and capturing location data including network owners, locators, municipalities, and one call centres.

Developing a subsurface digital twin for Canada

The Canadian Underground Infrastructure Register initiative

Underground infrastructure provides the essential services that fuel our economy. During construction excavators often damage elements of this infrastructure because the location of underground cables, pipes and ducts is not well known. Underground utilities are one of the biggest causes of delays and budget overruns on public construction projects. When these utilities are damaged, people may be injured, utility services to the public disrupted, and other indirect and societal costs incurred such as traffic disruptions and loss of custom.  Making the precise location of buried infrastructure accessible to engineers, designers and excavators not only keeps people safer, but also introduces greater efficiency into construction processes.

The annual number of voluntarily reported damages to underground utilities Canada-wide totals close to 12,000.  Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to repair the damaged pipe or cable. Indirect costs include many factors that are often hard to quantify such as traffic disruption, injuries and fatalities among workers and the public, and lost custom that local businesses experience. Damage to underground infrastructure during construction costs the Canadian economy about $3 billion annually. A large proportion of the costs of underground damage is borne by consumers, primarily through service disruptions. Return on investment (ROI) studies of improving location information about underground utilities conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large ROI, most recently $21.00 saved for every US$1.00 invested.

Six months ago an initiative to address the challenge of reducing damage to underground infrastructure was formed in Canada by Steve Slusarenko. Called the Canada Underground Infrastructure Register (CUIR) initiative its goal is to elevate awareness of the challenge of damage prevention in Canada and to develop a solution to enhance and improve the damage prevention processes currently in use. The CUIR initiative is intended to enhance current practices in a way that enables all stakeholder groups to benefit from the initiative; construction contractors, network owners, government transportation agencies, design engineers, subsurface utility engineering (SUE) engineers, surveyors, locators, workers in the field and the public. A cross-disciplinary team is being formed by reaching out to all stakeholder groups to elevate awareness of the CUIR project and achieve broad representation from the community.

To put this in context sharing maps of underground infrastructure is not new to Canada. For example, the City of Calgary's Joint Utility Mapping Project (JUMP) system, the ICI Society in British Columbia, the City of Toronto's Digital Map Owners Group (DMOG) and others have been sharing underground utility information for years.

Recently the CGA Next Practices Report to Industry argued that a comprehensive national GIS map of buried infrastructure is among the opportunities for systemic improvement with the greatest ROI for industry. The CUIR initiative has also been inspired by the progress of the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) project currently underway in the UK. The objective of NUAR is to develop a register of location data for all underground infrastructure in England, Wales and Northern Ireland that is accessible to all network owners and government agencies.

The benefits of a national register are improved safety; greater construction efficiency; reduced design, construction, and maintenance costs; greater regulatory compliance; improved locate efficiency; fewer project delays and budget overruns; fewer service disruptions to the public; and less traffic disruptions, loss of custom and other inconveniences for the public.

Opportune time to develop a national underground registry

There are several reasons why now is an opportune time to develop a national underground registry. First, according to a recent report from the Next Practices Initiative of the Common Ground Alliance the damage prevention industry has reached an inflection point. For more than half a decade, the rate of damage to underground infrastructure in North America has increased or remained stagnant. The North American one call system has become highly inefficient and industry confidence in the system has been eroded, resulting in a process that has stalled and is not achieving its primary goal of reducing damage to underground infrastructure. Second, recent developments is several jurisdictions have shown and are showing that the barriers to the development of such as system are surmountable. Thirdly, new innovative technical developments are making to possible to detect, capture and share underground information more efficiently and accurately than ever before.

Background: UK National Underground Asset Register

One of the most important initiatives that shows that what has been the major barrier to the development of an underground registry can be surmounted is the UK's National Underground Asset Register (NUAR). This initiative grew out of a bottom-up collaboration among asset owners and organizations involved in working on and maintaining embedded asset networks in the North East of England and Central London. The foundation for two successful pilots was provided by network owners coming together to agree on a legal framework for data sharing. Each network owner remained the custodian of its own data which provided for clear accountability chains in terms of ownership, governance and regulation. Also fundamental for achieving a high level of participation among asset owners was a risk-based approach based on a high standard of data security and data protection.

Challenges to development of a national underground infrastructure register

Chief among the barriers to a national register identified by a recent CGA report is the lack of the political will to share information. For several reasons including competitive, security and liability issues in some sectors there has been industry resistance to sharing facility location information with other stakeholders. One of the important learnings from the NUAR project is that this barrier is surmountable.

It is important to recognize at the outset that the challenge in developing a national register is not primarily technical. A growing list of companies provide technologies that are being used successfully to detect existing underground infrastructure, capture location of newly installed or exposed facilities with survey grade accuracy, and record and share underground location information on handhelds in the field. The chief challenges are organization, governance, and a robust funding mechanism.

Organization

A key barrier to developing a national register identified by the CGA is the lack of a centralized, trusted organization capable of providing the governance for and implementing a national GIS underground infrastructure database. Historically, different jurisdictions have dealt with the organizational challenge in different ways.

• In North America the industry standard is a mandated one call system funded by utility owners. In Canada an option for a national register would be to build on the existing one call systems, which enjoy 100% participation by law. One call procedures are familiar to many construction stakeholders and this option would minimize the changes required from current practice.

• Private for-profit companies run one call systems across Canada and internationally private companies run underground information sharing systems in Australia, US, and Singapore.

• An industry consortium is another option. In British Columbia, the ICI Society was formed a number of years ago by utilities who voluntarily got together and agreed to share their data for use cases other than damage prevention during excavation.

• A government supported voluntary system is another option. The Scottish Community Apparatus Data Vault (Vault) was initiated in 2012 when utilities and government transportation agencies got together and agreed to share data among themselves using a computer system developed at the University of Leeds.

• In some jurisdictions, government have mandated damage prevention structures. Laws and associated regulations stipulate activities that network owners, excavators and other stakeholders are required perform during a construction project. An important motivation for mandated systems is that they achieve 100% participation.

   

The main point here is that there are different approaches to organizing the capture and sharing of information about underground infrastructure among stakeholders. The most important factor in choosing an appropriate organization structure is that it must be able to achieve 100 % participation (or as close to 100% that is reasonably achievable) among those organization and disciplines involved in capturing and maintaining underground data including utility and telecom network owners, pipeline owners and operators, oil and gas firms, government transportation and other agencies, SUE engineers, surveyors and locators. Anything less 100 % detracts from the potential value of the register.

Governance

A fundamental requirement of a system for sharing information about underground utilities is security and data protection based on an agreed open and transparent governance model. Network owners need to feel confident that the system has robust security and data protection.  This needs to be laid out in the rules of engagement as part of the legal framework agreed to by all participants. A key success factor in the NUAR project was that network owners were able to agree on a legal framework for data sharing.  Each network owner remained the custodian of its own data which provided for clear accountability chains in terms of ownership, governance and regulation.

User fees

An important question is whether users should be expected to pay for this service? User fees should be viewed not just as contributing to funding but also for their impact on achieving a high level of participation. Traditionally in North America the one call system is funded by the network operators at no cost to excavators . The NUAR project in the U.K. is currently holding a public consultation to consider several options including fees for network operators, excavators, and other users of the system.

Funding mechanism

A national underground register provides an essential public service, contributing billions of dollars to the national economy, improving the productivity of the construction industry and providing important benefits to Canadian society as a whole, and its funding model should reflect the importance of its role. In the broader context of developing a subsurface digital twin, the funding model should enable the register to address other use cases in addition to damage during excavations including emergency response, utility asset maintenance, disaster planning and response, and smart cities programs.

A national register must be a dynamic organization able to take advantage of the latest technical innovations to accelerate the development of a high accuracy, up to date and comprehensive repository of underground data. Achieving this goal requires a robust funding model that can provide support not only for operations but also to provide for innovation. 

Data quality responsibility

An essential part of any conversation about data is who is responsible for each data element. When the registry reports that the accuracy of the location of a cable or pipe is within a half a meter horizontally and a meter vertically, I need to know who captured the data, when and with what equipment and most importantly who signed off for it. If it came from a SUE survey signed by a professional engineer, I will have confidence in it, but if the data is sourced from utility records with no professional taking responsibility for it, I will have little grounds for confidence in using it. Furthermore, metadata and a sign-off by a professional enables an informed conversation about whether the newly acquired data is better and should replace the existing record.

One of the things that needs to be clarified in the context of underground infrastructure is the roles of locators, professional surveyors, and professional engineers in collecting and certifying data. For example, in Colorado and Montana it is a requirement that as-builts be signed off by a professional. In most jurisdictions SUE surveys must be signed off by a professional. Understanding the equipment used to gather information and the reliability of that technique in that particular project situation is the responsibility of the person putting their sign and seal on the data. To choose and assign the appropriate coordinate system requires a professional surveyor who will also tie that decision in with with the existing project-level coordinates or survey coordinates and make sure it all fits together for the overall project. Assigning quality levels compliant with the ASCE 38 and CSA S-250 here in Canada requires sign off by a professional engineer. In North America land surveyors and professional engineers carry insurance that is designed specifically for them in the case of liabilities.

But what is the role of locators in upgrading location data about existing underground infrastructure ? Utility records comprise the vast majority of the data we have about underground utilities and much of this data is inaccurate, out of date or simply missing (especially in the case of abandoned infrastructure and infrastructure without a known owner). It is estimated that in the U.S. over $10 billion is spent annually in locating underground utilities and other infrastructure. Most of this is routine locate operations conducted by locators, often in response to a one call ticket, but it includes locate operations such as hydro vac contracted by excavators. Currently most of this data is not recorded or shared. To enable a national registry to achieve an acceptable level of data quality will require processes to upgrade the quality of existing data. Accurate as-builts and SUE surveys will play an important part, but given the huge volume of data, it seems clear that locators are going to be key to upgrading the quality of the data we hold about existing infrastructure. To enable locators to contribute in a meaningful way to improving this data, we are going to have to look at new innovative technologies for conducting locate operations and capturing and sharing the results, potentially new qualifications and certifications for locators, and new ways of assigning responsibility for data collected during routine locate operations.

Beneficiaries

Considering the impact of a national register for underground infrastructure on the various stakeholder groups suggest that many would benefit.

• One of the big benefits of a national register is risk reduction. Evidence from the Colorado experience, where contractors participated in the initiative right from the beginning, suggests that contractors there realized significantly less underground damage and very substantial financial benefits as a result of the measures implemented by CDOT.

• Another construction stage where reliable underground location data is also essential is planning and early engineering design.  The payback on having accurate data on the location or underground utilities during planning and design is enormous. Knowing reliably where underground utilities are located avoids redesign work and utility relocations.

• In Colorado the state Department of Transportation is the agency that is responsible for regulating the public ROW which provided a basis for regulating public construction projects to achieve more on time completions, fewer budget overruns and ultimately less cost to the taxpayer.

• For surveyors and SUE engineers a national register will increase demand for high accuracy location as-builts and for high quality SUE surveys.

• For network operators a national underground register would reduce the frequency of outages, eliminate unnecessary and expensive relocations, reduce  liabilities, lower the cost of supporting locate operations in response to one call notifications and ensure greater regulatory compliance.

• A major share of the cost of underground utility damage is borne by the rate-paying public primarily through loss of service.  A national underground repository would reduce service interruptions and lower the risk of traffic and other disruptions, injuries and fatalities associated with incidents of damage to underground infrastructure. 

• For locators a national register represents a large opportunity to contribute to accurately locating and recording location data for the millions of miles of existing underground infrastructure for which existing data is generally unreliable. To do this efficiently will require familiarity with new and innovative technology for locating existing underground infrastructure. The effect of these changes should be to raise the professional profile of locators and this will be reflected in higher pay levels and reduced staff turnover.

A national underground registry would also be expected to result in lower insurance costs which would produce financial benefits for many stakeholders. Construction contracting is a low margin business and reducing insurance premiums would be significant benefit for them as it would add directly to their bottom line. Reduced insurance costs would also be expected to benefit network operators and others.

Summary

Underground utility damage is expensive economically and socially. The Canada Underground Infrastructure Register (CUIR) initiative is intended to elevate awareness of the challenge of underground infrastructure damage in Canada and to improve current damage prevention processes. Now is an opportune time to develop a national underground registry for several reasons. First, the damage prevention industry has reached an inflection point. For more than half a decade, the rate of damage to underground infrastructure in North America has increased or remained stagnant. The North American one call system has become highly inefficient and industry confidence in the system has been eroded. Second, recent developments is several jurisdictions are showing that the barriers to the development of such as system are surmountable.  Thirdly, new innovative technical developments are making to possible to detect, capture and share underground information more efficiently and accurately than ever before.

A centralized national map of underground infrastructure accessible all construction stakeholders provides systemic benefits with a large ROI for the construction industry, as well as economic and societal benefits.  To provide governance for and an implementation of a national register of underground infrastructure location data requires a trusted, centralized organization. A key criterion for choosing an organization structure is that it must be capable of achieving as near to 100 % participation as possible among utility and telecom network owners, government agencies, design engineering firms, contractors, surveyors, SUE engineers, locators and others. In North America many construction stakeholders are familiar with their state or provincial one call system which could provide the foundation for a national register that would minimize the changes required from current practice.

An appropriate funding model is required that reflects the importance of the register as an essential public service, contributing billions of dollars to the national economy and providing important benefits to Canadian society as a whole. Specifically the funding model should be able to support a dynamic organization, not only be able to support operations but also to provide for innovation.

Several capabilities are essential for making such a register effective. Open and transparent governance is a key requirement. Organizations such as utilities and telecoms who contribute and share their data need to know that the register provides a secure environment with data protection and a legal framework with agreed rules for how data is to be shared. Another is responsibility for data quality, in which professional surveyors, professional engineers and locators will play key roles.

A national underground infrastructure register would not only contribute billions of dollars to the economy, improve construction productivity and provide important societal benefits to Canadians, but it would also provide significant benefits to individual stakeholder groups: contractors, government transportation and infrastructure agencies, network owners, engineering design firms, and provide large opportunities for SUE engineers, surveyors and locators.

If you would like to get involved in the project, please contact Steve Slusarenko and we will provide materials with more details on our objectives and how we're planning to achieve them. Our goal is to enlist all stakeholder groups to help us put this together to everybody's benefit.

This article is based on the panel discussion on Developing a digital twin for Canada at the Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF). The Moderator was Steve Slusarenko and the panellists were Lawrence Arcand, president of 4Sight Utility Engineers, vice-chair of the CSA S-250 committee, and chair of the Transportation Association of Canada's (TAC) Public Utilities Management Subcommittee, Wilson Phillips, representing Professional Surveyors Canada and who has been working on finding a solution for managing underground infrastructure data in Canada for a decade, and Geoff Zeiss, Principal at Between The Poles, who has been following and documenting underground infrastructure data systems worldwide for 25 years.