Between the Poles

UK pilots demonstrate secure platform for sharing information about underground utility networks

In the 2017 autumn budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer announced an important initiative to increase the value of the contribution of spatial data to the UK economy. The Geospatial Commission was created in the centre of government, as an independent, expert committee. It aims to unlock the significant economic opportunities offered by geospatial data and to reinforce the UK’s geospatial expertise on the global stage.

To provide strategic oversight of the geospatial landscape in the UK, the Commission provided a  £5 million fund to support collaborative data projects across 6 Partner Bodies - Ordnance Survey, HM Land Registry, British Geological Survey, Valuation Office Agency, UK Hydrographic Office and Coal Authority who between them hold most of the governments high quality geospatial data.

Among the first projects initiated by the Geospatial Commission was a process leading to the creation of a National Underground Assets Register (NUAR).  The objective of NUAR was to create a secure means to share information about underground infrastructure mainly among local government organizations, and utility and telecom network operators.  The register is intended to show where electricity and telecom cables, and gas and water pipes are buried and is targeted on several use cases: safe digging to avoid utility strikes, on-site construction efficiency, site planning, data exchange, and improved coordination. The project started with £3.9 million allocated for two pilot projects split between Central London and North East of England.

The system for sharing underground data for both pilots was provisioned by OS on an in-country cloud platform. It is built on an OGC standard data model and supports OGC standards such as WFS for data exchange which enables most GIS products such as QGIS and ArcGIS to access it. A lot of the effort was devoted to security, privacy and protection of competitive information. For each network operator there is a terms and conditions document that defines the legal requirements for how that operator's data can be used, Queries are limited to 10,000 square meters for field user access and there are other limits to prevent multiple queries aimed at viewing an entire network. System users are network operators, local government, and contractors working for either of these.

Using an earlier prototype version of this platform in 2018 OS and Northumbrian Water undertook to create a map of underground infrastructure in Newcastle on Tyne.  The objective was to compile in collaboration with utilities, local authorities and partners a combined infrastructure map for small sample areas including water, wastewater, gas, electricity, telecoms and other underground services. The project benefited from a spirit of cooperation - all major local utilities and telecoms in Newcastle were happy to share their data and had vector data available to contribute.  The result was a database where each utility was steward of its own data which was shared through a hub. Interoperability based on OGC standards was demonstrated with three different GIS systems consuming the combined underground data through APIs. The data could be ingested into GIS systems with internet access, regardless of format and provisioned to both field engineers and planners.    As part of this experiment in creating a shared map of underground utilities, contractors were brought in to actually dig a hole so that participants could experience first hand what is involved in excavating to determine the location of buried utility assets.  OS created a web interface to enable excavation teams in the field to access the data relevant to them via a mobile device.  By the end of the week it was possible to demonstrate a working system that allowed excavators to query the map of underground utilities and use this information during excavation and construction.  At the innovation festival a data sharing agreement was developed that all parties agreed to – Northumbrian Water, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Power Grid, Openreach, Durham County Council, Newcastle and Sunderland City Councils, Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute, British Geological Survey and Ordnance Survey.

Following on the innovation festival the participants formed the North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIHub) consortium in order to progress the creation of a ‘Common Infrastructure Map’ implementing a dataset that contains almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data for the city of Sunderland.

The most recent implementation of the NUAR system was deployed in late 2019 in the North East of England and as part of the pilot in Central London. When I was in Newcastle for a meeting of the NUAR Advisory Group, we went out in the field with an iPad to compare the network information available on the NUAR pilot system with above-ground visible infrastructure, manhole and handhole covers with distinctive designs allowing the below-ground network to be identified.  While the quality of the data was what I expected from utility as-builts (PAS 128 quality level D), the remarkable part of the experience was being able to see all the underground networks, water, wastewater, electric power, gas, and telecom, in the query area together on the screen - a very rare experience anywhere in the world.

The Central London pilot is covering the area of six boroughs in Central London. While the vast majority of relevant data has already been vectorized in the Northeast of England, this is not necessarily the case in London.The Greater London Authority (GLA) will provide funding to local authorities to locate data and upgrade its format for use within the pilot platform. To enable comparison of vector and raster data, for three of the boroughs all the data will be vectorized. For the remainder various formats including raster will be used.

There are two remarkable achievements of these pilots.  The first is a secure legal framework within which municipal government organizations and network operators are able to safely and securely share their data. When a user accesses data of a network operator, there is a downloadable document associated with the data that defines the terms and conditions under which the data can be used. 

The other remarkable element is that it makes it very easy to provide information about  errors that are observed by stakeholders in the field, for example, if a contractor performing road work for a town council exposes pipes or cables that are not located where utility as-builts indicate they should be. In the NUAR pilot system these are called observations and are represented by green triangles associated with the incorrectly located features. Observations enable a worker who notices an error in the field - a wrong location, incorrect type of equipment, or other problem - to enter corrected information about the location, type of equipment, and other information from a mobile device.

Damage to underground utilities represents a significant risk to the public and is a major cause of construction project delays and budget overruns. The NUAR project represents an important step forward in enabling the sharing of information about the location and other information about underground infrastructure that will contribute to reducing the risk of damage to underground utilities during construction.

Elements for improving underground utility mapping to reduce risk of damage during construction

Without accurate maps of underground infrastructure, every construction project has the potential to become a disaster site. Unlike the aviation industry where reliable data is collected and is accessible to investigators to prevent disasters from happening in the future, there is limited access to data about the location of underground infrastructure and what data is accessible is inaccurate, out-of-date and incomplete with the result that serious incidents during construction with injuries and fatalities occur again and again.  It is estimated that in the United States $10 billion is devoted to locating underground infrastructure prior to and during construction, but the available statistics indicate that this is not reducing the number or severity of incidents of underground utility damage.  Furthermore inaccurate and missing information about underground infrastructure increases the risk of schedule and budget overruns.  It has been estimated that this represents a $50 billion drag on the U.S. economy and upto a £6 billion drag on the U.K. economy.

Nearly every month the news carries reports of explosions caused by damage to underground utilities during construction excavation. In the last few months of this year there have been explosions in Murrieta, California (July) where a utility worker was killed and 15 others injured, downtown San Francisco (February), Durham, North Carolina (May), and I could go on. These incidents are more frequent than many people realize. 

This is not an impossible problem. A number of cities, regions and countries around the world have recognized the importance of accurate information about the location of underground infrastructure and implemented processes to reduce the risk of these events. For example, comparing the United States and Japan reveals a startling difference in the number of incidents of underground utility damage during construction. The number of incidents in the U.S. is between 400,000 and 800,000 per year (roughly one or two every minute). For all of Japan the number of incidents in 2016 was 134. Clearly something can be done to reduce the risk for construction workers and the public.

Over the years I have personally compiled information on 25 jurisdictions including airports in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific that have implemented various policies and organizational structures for sharing information about the location of underground infrastructure. These range from government mandated and implemented, government mandated and privately implemented, voluntary industry associations, and private companies. In this article I provide a synthesis of measures most of which have been implemented, are being implemented, or have undergone pilot implementations. These can be grouped in several broad categories.

• Reliable statistics on underground utility damage

• Policies, procedures, and technologies for raising the level of accuracy, timeliness and completeness of information about the location of underground infrastructure.

• Digitalizing the capture, sharing and updating of location information about underground infrastructure.

• Ensuring security and privacy of location information about underground networks including protection for competitive information. 

• Providing access to stakeholders to underground infrastructure location information throughout the construction project life-cycle from planning and design through construction to operations and maintenance.

• Liability model for sharing responsibility for costs of underground utility damage.

Airports, university campuses, and industrial campuses are characterized by a greater density of underground utilities and by more types of underground equipment( communications cables, aeronautical ground lighting cables, gas mains, low voltage electric power cables, high voltage electric power cables, storm water mains, sanitary waste water mains, potable water mains, grey water mains, fuel mains, fire fighting water mains, and a variety of underground structures.) Underground infrastructure in airports, university and industrial campuses typically has a single owner though not always.

Public jurisdictions such as national, regional, state or provincial and municipal governments are responsible for the public right of way.  Typically underground infrastructure in the public right of way involves multiple private owners; telecom network operators, electric power utilities, gas network operators, water and wastewater operators,and others such as heating and fuel transmission pipeline operators. Dealing with multiple private owners who attempt to maintain information about their network facilities typically in a GIS considerably complicates the process of acquiring and maintaining accurate location information about underground cables and pipes.

1. Reliable statistics are essential to determine the social impact of underground utility damage and to assess the effectiveness of policies, procedures and technologies designed to reduce the number and severity of incidents of underground utility damage. Every incident of damage to underground infrastructure should be reported including injuries, fatalities and direct cost. Indirect cost is a nice to have, but very difficult to estimate. Cause is difficult to determine because it depends on who is reporting the incident - network operator, the excavator, or by an independent organization.  A network operator's perspective may be that the contractor did not exercise care during excavation, whereas the contractor's perspective may be that the location of the cable or pipe as identified as a result of a one-call request was inaccurate.  Responsibility for submitting this information has to be assigned to the   One option for doing this efficiently is to classify incidents by seriousness and assign different levels of reporting based on this classification. For pipelines PHMSA assigns levels of seriousness based on cost, consequence, injuries and fatalities.  Significant incidents include any of the following: (1) Fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization, (2) $50,000 or more in total costs,(3) release of significant volumes of gas or hazardous liquid. Serious incidents include a fatality or injury requiring in-patient hospitalization.  In civil aviation each serious incident is investigated by the NTSB, an impartial group of experts who determine technical cause but do not assign blame. The available evidence from the U.S. civil aviation industry, pipeline industry, and many national statistical agencies suggest incident reporting should be mandated to ensure statistically reliable data.  This entails significant penalties for not reporting incidents. Ex. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), Heathrow International Airport, Japan Construction Industry Association

2. 3D mapping of underground infrastructure prior to planning and design. Making the location of underground infrastructure available to engineers so that designers have access to not only accurate above-ground survey but also accurate below-ground location information enables engineers to avoid underground infrastructure during design. 3D maps of underground utilities also contributes to reducing unnecessary and costly utility relocation. Below-ground location information should be at least ASCE quality level B.  The entire area should be should be assessed by an SUE engineer in collaboration with utilities and telecoms with equipment in the area. The assessment may include scanning with modern remote-detection tools (EMI, GPR and inertial locating ) to raise the quality of location of all underground facilities to QL B and to identify abandoned or unknown infrastructure.  The cost of raising the quality level of facilities in the design area to B could be assigned to the relevant network operator, engineering firm or shared. For unknown and abandoned equipment an attempt should be made to find the original owner. Ex. Colorado 811

3. Locating unknown and abandoned facilities.  The current one-call system is targeted toward utilities locating their own facilities, typically based on their as-builts.  But there is no formal mechanism for locating facilities that have been abandoned or are not shown on network operator as-builts.  Requiring a full SUE survey in addition to a traditional surface survey at part of planning and design at the beginning of a construction project helps avoid surprises during construction. Ex. Colorado 811
   

4. Capturing and sharing the location of infrastructure detected as a result of a SUE survey at the beginning of a project or as the result of an information request to one-call/811.  Currently utilities are required to paint the ground and in some jurisdictions to provide a paper sketch indicating the location of underground utilities.   This information needs to be captured digitally and shared.  The objective is over time to build up a high quality (QL A and B) database of the location of underground infrastructure that can be shared.  Ex. Colorado Department of Transportation

5. Capturing and sharing the location of infrastructure exposed during construction. In the United States it is estimated that $10 billion is spent annually to locate underground infrastructure prior to and during construction.  Much of this information is not shared and the next time excavation occurs in the same area, the underground infrastructure must be located again.  If this information is captured and shared, over time a high quality (QL A and B) database of the location of underground infrastructure will be formed that will avoid locating the same infrastructure over and over again.  Alternatives for recording the location of exposed infrastructure include total station, RTK, and LiDAR, which tend to be expensive but high quality (QL A). Other alternatives are consumer photography with control points or structures with accurately known locations.  It is essential that this does not increase excavation costs for the contractor.  Contractor margins are tight and having to keep a survey crew on hand during excavation would significantly increase costs. There have been experiments by the City of Chicago, Bentley and Costain aimed at efficiently capturing location information about utilities exposed during construction.

6. An efficient process to update the information recorded in network operators' databases. Information captured as part of a SUE survey, as a result of an information request to one-call/811, or detected during excavation may differ from the records contained in network operators' databases.  For continuous improvement of the quality of the information about the location of network facilities requires an efficient way to compare and update this information.

7. Reducing or eliminating the update backlog.  Utilities regularly maintain underground infrastructure, move it as part of a construction project, or abandon it.  This information has to be reported back to the network operator to update the information in the utility GIS.  There are two dimensions to updates; the accuracy of the location information provided from the field and the update backlog, the time it takes for updates to be entered in the utility GIS.  As with the as-built backlog this backlog can stretch into months.  The objective should be better than a day. This issue can also be resolved by regulation or by a suitable liability model. Ex. Ofgem in the U.K. requires backlogs to not exceed 42 calendar days.

8. Improving the accuracy of location information for new underground infrastructure.  If all new facilities are located to survey quality, over time location accuracy will continue to improve  as older facilities are retired. Alternatives for recording the location of newly installed infrastructure include total station, RTK, LiDAR, and photogrammetry with control points or structures with accurately known locations.  Whatever the technology the result should be ASCE quality level A.  Special provision must be made for capturing the location of facilities installed using horizontal (trenchless) drilling, for example, inertial mapping of pipe networks.  Since reliable as-builts are generally a network operator responsibility - policies are required to ensure that as-builts for newly installed equipment are accurate. There are several ways to do this; legislation which enables a government or regulator to conduct QA/QC checks on submitted as-builts or a shared liability model that assigns some responsibility for subsurface utility damage to network operators whose as-builts are inaccurate or out-of-date. A  liability model would assign liability of any underground damage during subsequent excavation to the network operator if the as-built location information is incorrect. Ex. City of Calgary, Singapore

9. Reducing or eliminating the as-built backlog.  If the time it takes for as-built information to enter the utility GIS or other database from the time new infrastructure is installed is measured in months or longer, the utility GIS is not sufficently reliable for locating underground infrastructure for construction purposes.  The objective should be better than a day. This can be resolved by regulation or by a suitable liability model.  Ex. Ofgem in the U.K. requires as-built backlogs to be less than 42 calendar days.

10. Assigning a quality level based on a generally accepted quality standard to every piece of underground infrastructure. This is critical for determining the type of excavation equipment that it is appropriate to use. It can also provide the basis for a shared liability model.  Ex. ASCE 38-02 in the U.S., CSA S250 in Canada, PAS 128 in the U.K., France DICT

11. Digitalizing the capture and sharing of information about the underground.  In North America, most one-call legislation only requires marking the ground prior to the initiation of construction.  In Ontario a written record is required in addition to marking the ground. At the federal level in Canada there is legislation initiated in the Senate and that offers the alternative of the exchange of only a written record of the location of utilities mapped prior to excavation - no visit to the site to mark the ground is required. This would open the door to exchanging a digital record of the location of utilities found prior to excavation which would be much more efficient because it could obviate the need to visit the site of the proposed excavation.  However, it would also a higher quality standard for the location of underground infrastructure than is currently the practice.  Ex. ROADIC (Japan), KLIP in Flanders, KLIC in the Netherlands

12. Digitalizing the flow of information about underground infrastructure requires a generally recognized standard for sharing information about the subsurface. The Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) is developing an underground information exchange standard, with the appropriate acronym MUDDI, that is intended to provide an open standards-based way to share information about the below ground. There are a number of data models for different types of underground infrastructure and geotechnics. MUDDI builds on and augments existing standards to create a unified model supporting multiple use cases. The MUDDI model is intended to support routine street excavations, emergency response, utility maintenance programs, large scale construction projects, disaster planning and response, and smart cities programs. For street excavations the requirement is location of all entities with high horizontal, medium vertical accuracy (2.5D) of underground infrastructure; for large construction projects, detailed 3D geometry of underground infrastructure and detailed 3D geotechnics; for emergency response, interdependencies between different networks; for utility maintenance, network topology and facility location and condition; and for smart cities the ability to monitor and relate streams of data from sensors. This has not yet been adopted by a jurisdiction, but agencies in the U.K. (Ordnance Surevy), Singapore (Singapore Land Authority), and New York (Fund for the City of New York) are actively supporting the development of the standard.

13. Efficient information flow.  Requiring vans with locating crews from several network operators to visit the site of a proposed excavation just prior to construction to scan the ground for their facilities using EMI and GPR and mark the ground is inefficient. An on-line system that allows an engineer or contractor to go online and define a polygon enclosing the proposed excavation and then within less than a day providing access to maps of underground infrastructure in the area can save network operators time and money.  However, the effectiveness of this solution is highly dependent on the quality of the location information maintained by network operators.  In North America the current one-call system requires that underground facilities be mapped to ASCE QL B before starting construction.  An online system providing digital maps composed of utility operators' as-builts would lower the accuracy of the location information provided to contractors and in the absence of other measures would likely increase underground utility damage. Ex, KLIP in Flanders, KLIC in the Netherlands.

14. Rules for the appropriate type of excavation equipment.  Rules are required that restrict the type of excavation equipment based on the quality level of underground utilities identified by network operators.  For example if facilities have been assigned ASCE quality level C or D, only hydraulic, vacuum or hand excavation may be used.  Ex. Heathrow airport

15. Security, privacy and protecting competitive information. To enable this information to be useful in reducing the risk of underground infrastructure damage during construction it has to be shared in a secure way which respects privacy.  In particular it must protect competitive information. There are a number of organizational ways of doing this; government can mandate, implement and run the system, government can mandate but leave it to the private sector to implement and run, an industry consortium with or without government mandate can implement and run the system, regulations could require sharing this information but leave it to the private sector to implement and run, or a private company could take overall responsibility.  Around the world there are examples where each of these alternatives can be found.  The information should be available to engineers during the planning and design phases of construction projects, to contractors for use during excavation, and to organizations responsible for operating and maintaining highways and other civil structures.  Other potential use cases for this data include disaster planning and emergency response.  Ex. KLIP in Flanders and KLIC in the Netherlands, North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) in Newcastle, England

16. Liability model for sharing responsibility for costs of underground utility damage.  The advantage of a rule-based shared liability model that assigns varying levels of responsibility to both contractors and network operators is that it provides motivation to network operators to improve the quality of their location information about their underground infrastructure existing and new.  An example of a shared model is the following: if a network operator identifies the location of a piece of underground equipment as Quality Level A according to the ASCE 38-2 standard and an excavator hits it, the excavator would be liable for costs if the facility was where the network operator said it was, or the network operator would be liable if it wasn't.  For an excavator intending to dig in an area where there is underground infrastructure assigned to level C or D, the cost to bring all infrastructure to quality level B would lie with the network operator (as it does now with North American one-call systems). If the network operator declines to do this, the liability for any underground damage would lie with the network operator. Ex. France DICT

These measures not only can reduce the risk of underground utility damage and the associated risk to the public during construction and thereby lower insurance costs, but can also significantly reduce the cost of infrastructure construction, for example, by avoiding major utilities and reducing the unnecessary and costly moving of utilities on civil engineering projects.

Experience has shown that over time these elements can result in increasingly accurate digital representations showing the location of underground infrastructure that is available to stakeholders in construction projects including planners, engineers, contractors and facilities managers, for utility maintenance, and potentially for other use cases such as utility outage management, disaster planning, emergency response and smart city programs.

Map of underground utilities available within one day of a one-call information request

On 30 July 2004 at a construction site in Ghislenghien, Belgium a one metre diameter natural gas pipeline ruptured resulting in 24 fatalities, including five fire-fighters, a police officer and five employees, plus 132 injured requiring hospitalization. It caused total devastation within 200 metres in an industrial/agricultural area destroying a cardboard mill, a gas station, and a large number of roofs and cars. A portion of the construction site was damaged and many agricultural fields burned. 

In 2007, the first version of KLIP, the Flemish one-call system which is a broker for information about the location underground utilities, went into production in Flanders. In the Netherlands in 2008 the Sub soil Cables and Pipelines Information Exchange Act (WION) came into effect. The objective of the system is to prevent damages to the utility network and to ensure the safety of excavators during excavations.  WION made KLIC, the Dutch one-call system, which had existed since 1967, mandatory for both network operators and excavators with severe penalties for excavators who circumvented the system. Violating WION can entail a maximum fine of € 450,000 for network operators and € 100,000 for excavators.  WION obligates all network operators to participate in the system, using a standard information model for registering their infrastructure. The KLIC-online system, which provides on-line information exchange of underground utility information between network operators and exvators, was built and is maintained by the Dutch Kadaster. The Agency Telecom, part of the Ministry of Economic Affairs, is designated as the regulator and enforcer of the act.

I blogged previously (2013 and 2014) about the Dutch KLIC system. In 2010 the Netherlands switched to a digital information system (KLIC-Online). Currently there is a charge of € 32 for every information request.

Anyone planning to excavate within the next 20 days is required to go to the KLIC App site and create a polygon enclosing the proposed excavation area (which cannot exceed 500x500 meters).  They then click on the type of work: dredging, grub/plan trees, deep ploughing, foundation work, drive piles, gardeners work, place/remove poles/masts, demolition work, pond digging, dam-wall/timbering, drainage, site preparation, place fencing, place cables/pipes, sewerage work, dig or excavate tanks/wells/containers, dig forage hole, or reallocation; enter personal information; and pay.  It is important to note that engineering design is not one of the options.

For 95% of information requests within one business day the excavator will receive an email with links to a location where maps of all underground infrastructure and the names of the utility and telecom operators with facilities in the excavation area can be accessed or downloaded. This data can be used both online and offline.  The system allows distances to be measured and provides information about the quality of the location information about underground utilities.  For the next 20 days the excavator is cleared to begin excavation unless some the facilities in the area are high consequence utility lines such as gas transmission and high voltage electric lines.  In these special cases the excavator will be directed to contact the network operator for supervised excavation.

Network operators are required to report all incidents of damage to their infrastructure including location, cause and other information.  Based on this and other information Kadaster publishes an annual report with statistics on underground utility damage.  The following is an example of statistics about underground utility information requests and damage in the Netherlands for 2018.

 

Network operators/managers	1,130
Annual notifications (request for info)	759,000
Annual excavation damage	41,169
Direct costs from damage	€ 34,500,000
Average repair cost per excavation damage	€ 838

I would assess the biggest benefit of the KLIC system is efficiency.  KLIC seems light years ahead of North America and other jurisdictions where every request for information to a one-call centre results in seven or so vans converging on the spot where detection tools are used to locate underground utilities whose location is then marked by paint or flags. 

However, to the best of my knowledge the goal of substantially reducing excavation damage has not yet been reached.  With tens of thousands of incidents of utility damage every year, there is certainly room for improvement. That this is achievable can be seen by contrasting the number of incidents in the Netherlands with Japan where in 2016 the number of incidents of underground utility damage was 134. 

Furthermore, information about the location of underground utilities needs to be available for other use cases than just excavation; first and foremost, the planning and engineering design phases of construction projects (as Colorado has just mandated), but also disaster planning, and emergency response.

Burgeoning market for shareable subsurface geotechnical information

Unforeseen ground conditions are a major cause of delays in construction projects.  This year, at Bentley Systems’ Year in Infrastructure Conference, Roger Chandler, Director of Geotechnical Information Management, announced OpenGround, a collection of applications for collecting, sharing, visualizing, analyzing, and accessing geotechnical information about the ground. OpenGround is a cloud-based SaaS application with a web API, which in its short life has already amassed a database of over 500 thousand boreholes.

Every construction project devotes considerable effort to discovering subsurface geotechnical conditions, but this data is often used by the engineering consultant for a sinle project and rarely shared.  In the Netherlands an attempt is being made to address the problem by the Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) which came into force in January, 2018. The BRO registry ultimately will record 26 geotechnical data types.

In the UK the Dig to Share project, supported by Atkins, the British Geological Survey (BGS) and Morgan Sindall, is also attempting to address this problem. Its aim is to develop a fully digital workflow, which is accessible to the whole industry, to upload and access data from a web-based system.

I had the opportunity to chat with Roger to understand better the business drivers for OpenGround and the growing market for software for capturing, sharing and analyzing geotechnical information about the ground.

Amey Consulting

Roger explained that the market consists primarily of engineering consulting and construction contractors, although there are also utilities, primarily water companies, who routinely conduct borehole surveys prior to installing new infrastructure. The information captured from boreholes includes location, information about each layer or stratum including a description, standard soil type classification, and the geological formation to which it belongs together with in-situ and laboratory test data. Currently, this data is captured typically by pen and paper, but mobile apps are more efficient in capturing this information and is being rapidly adopted. Mobile apps are already being used by 20% of all users and the speed of adoption is increasing.

There are two important drivers that are behind the rapid expansion of this market. The first is sharing geotechnical information among consulting engineers and contractors on construction projects. Typically survey and borehole information is used by engineering consultants when designing a new facility, but this information is rarely shared with construction contractors. OpenGround is designed to enable everyone involved in a construction project to have secure access to this important information.

Secondly, over time storing the information captured from boreholes from various projects and keeping it alive and available for future projects is a benefit for regional bodies creating digital cities and may be a source of competitive advantage for a construction or engineering company doing repeat work in the same geographic areas. This may explain why some companies may be less than enthusiastic about sharing their private geotechnical information on open sites.

The borehole information that is captured by a company and stored using OpenGround remains private. But since it is stored in the cloud it can be made available to everyone within the company and can also be shared with other participants on a construction project. This enables consulting engineering companies to share geotechnical information with other players on a project. In the context of Bentley projects geotechnics is critical for many construction projects, but especially for civil engineering projects. OpenGround is designed to integrate with other products such as PLAXIS, OpenRoads, OpenRail, STAAD.foundation, and others.

OpenGround represents an important step forward in IT tools enabling the sharing of information about the ground. This is a commercial service, and the rapid growth in this market is evidence that companies are recognizing significant value in capturing and sharing geotechnical information both within a company and with other players on a construction project.

Ground-breaking initiative by Colorado DOT for capturing and sharing location of underground utilities

According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) missing or inaccurate location information about underground utilities is a major source of highway construction project delays and budget overruns.  Some jurisdictions have taken advantage of their legal right to control what goes into public right-of-ways.  I have previously blogged about Calgary, Alberta and Las Vegas, Nevada as two examples in North America, which have attempted to control the accuracy of location information about underground utilities including telecom.  The chief challenges they faced have been finding a solution to address this issue cost-effectively all the while providing survey-grade accuracy and creating QA/QC processes for ensuring that this information is accurate, up-to-date and secure.  In general this requires a multi-pronged approach involving government legislation and regulation, modern technology and partnerships between different levels of government, utilities and telecoms, and the construction companies and contractors.

I had a chance to chat recently with Rob Martindale, Utility Program Manager at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Chairman of the GIS and Data Management Technical Committee for the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) and Page Tucker, CEO and founder of Prostar Geocorp. Rob told me that in Colorado the legislative framework for managing and sharing utility information about underground infrastructure has been developed and implemented.  Using a Cloud and mobile solution developed by ProStar Geocorp, CDOT has implemented ProStar’s Precision Mapping Solution ™ to be used by CDOT as well as all of the utilities, telecoms, contractors and other stakeholders in Colorado to capture, display and share the location of utility infrastructure that lies below the earth’s surface. According to Page Tucker, ProStar’s Precision Mapping Solution leverages Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) standards including Web Mapping Services (WMS) and Web Feature Services (WFS) and is also designed to support quality standards such as ASCE 38-02 in the US and CSA S250 in Canada. The ProStar Solution is natively built to be open source using GeoServer and seamlessly integrates with other modern technologies and legacy systems of record including Bentley, ESRI and GE Smallworld.  It also uses standard map services such as Google Maps, Bing, and OpenStreetMap for base mapping as well as LiDAR and drone imagery when higher levels of precision are required.  The Prostar Solution even integrates with One Call centers allowing the State One Call center to provide One Call tickets in real-time, so that it is possible to display the location of all open tickets and their status on a PC or mobile device such as a tablet or smart phone. The solution can even auto-populate digital locate forms based on the new One Call tickets.  The Prostar solution is also secure. Page Tucker told me that the ProStar Solution is SOC2 compliant and can use roles and privileges in the settings as well as geo-fencing to restrict views of operator networks, which is a key requirement for telecom operators.  Century Link is one of several key beta testers on the Colorado state implementation and many other utility owners including Zayo Communications have also expressed an interest in participating.

There are two components to the ProStar Solution. Transparent Earth® which is the Cloud platform and PointMan® which is the mobile application. PointMan runs on both Android and iOS and can use the device's internal GPS for mapping grade data collection as well as external GPS and RTK to identify the location of exposed or newly installed underground infrastructure in the field with precision levels that can range from a foot to centimeter accuracy without requiring a survey team.  The PointMan application according to Mr. Martindale is both intuitive and very easy for field crews to use.  Furthermore, construction contractors that have adopted the solution report that it does not add to their current workload and is already saving them time.

At this point the shared database does not include utility and telecom as-built data but Prostar incorporates support for bidirectional inclusion of this data with notifications to utilities when any of this data is changed so that it can be used for maintaining and improving utility as-builts.

This is a ground-breaking initiative involving legislation, regulation and new technology to address one of the chief causes of highway construction delays and cost overruns. CDOT's adoption of the ProStar Solution is now getting the attention from other State DOTs as well as several Federal agencies.  Utah DOT for example followed CDOT and has also implemented the ProStar Solution. 

New OpenGround product for sharing underground geotechnical data achieves over 500,000 boreholes

Unforeseen ground conditions are a major cause of delays in construction projects.  This year at the Year in Infrastructure event Bentley announced OpenGround a collection of applications for collecting, sharing, visualizing, analyzing, and accessing geotechnical information about the underground. It has already amassed a database of over 500 thousand boreholes. 

Reports from the National Economic Development Office (NEDO) found that 50% of commercial buildings and 37% of industrial buildings experienced delay due to unforeseen ground conditions.  There are two aspects to the problems associated with the subsurface.  One is geotechnics, soil, ground water, and geology conditions.  The other is the location of underground infrastructure, utilities, telecommunications and other cables and pipes.

Every construction project devotes considerable effort to discovering subsurface geotechnical conditions, but this data is used for the current project and rarely shared.  In the Netherlands an attempt is being made to address the problem by the Key Registry for the Subsurface (BRO) which came into force in January, 2018. The BRO registry ultimately will record 26 data types.  On 1 January 2018,it become mandatory to report the first three data types, geotechnical surveys (CPT), groundwater monitoring wells and soil drilling sample profiles. On 26 June 2018, this data became publicly available via the Dutch open data portal PDOK.

In the UK the Dig to Share project, supported by Atkins, British Geological Survey (BGS) and Morgan Sindall, is addressing this problem. Its aim is to develop a fully digital workflow, which is accessible to the whole industry, to upload and access data from the BGS web-based system. This will be developed on top of the existing system hosted and maintained by BGS. 

Last year Bentley announced the acquisition of Keynetix, a UK-based provider of cloud-based software for capturing, visualizing, modeling, and sharing geotechnical data. This added to Bentley's products for the subsurface including borehole report management (gINT and HoleBASE) and geotechnical analysis applications (PLAXIS 3D and SoilVision) with which Bentley plans to enable a digital twin of the underground.

This year at the Year in Infrastructure 2019 event in Singapore Roger Chandler, Director of Product Management, GeoTechnical Information Management, announced a new product OpenGround (based on Keynetix.cloud).  OpenGround is a cloud-based SaaS application with a web API that supports real-time logging of subsurface geotechnical data and enables sharing this data over the web.  In the very short time since OpenGround became available it has already amassed a database of over 500 thousand boreholes. 

Accelerating progress in open spatial data infrastructure at the municipal level in Canada

At the SDI Summit in Quebec City Gordon Plunkett offered an interesting perspective on the penetration of open spatial data infrastructure (SDI) at the municipal level in Canada.  Local governments are traditionally responsible for local services such as safety, infrastructure, environment, and recreation that directly impact citizens' daily life. But citizens are often not aware of available services. To increase citizen engagement local governments should make their services more easy to use, understandable, and relevant by providing them in visual form via web pages and web apps.

Background

Open data has been gathering momentum among governments initially driven by United States Federal Government data being in the public domain (since 1909.) The principle of free and open access to government geospatial data has been adopted by many governments including US Federal, Canada, Japan, South Africa, Brazil, California state and counties, and by the City of Vancouver and other cities.  In 2013 G8 leaders (Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Russia, United Kingdom, United States, and the European Union) signed a charter on open data.  The Ordnance Survey in the UK began releasing some of its data with open licensing as part of its OpenData initiative in 2010, but it wasn't until 2018 that the OS Mastermap was made openly available for the public and businesses to use. But being able to access prepared maps and other derived material is just a first step, governments need to provide access to raw geospatial data in commonly used Web-friendly formats. In the U.S. Data.gov was launched in late 2009.  In 2013, President Obama issued an Executive Order making open and machine readable the new default for federal government information in the United States.

In Canada the Government of Canada announced its Open Government Action Plan in 2012.  The fundamental principle was a government-wide directive making government information and data available to the public by default. Geospatial has led the development of open data in Canada.  Of the 80,000+ datasets that are available on the federal government's open data portal, 69,000+ are geospatial. Currently in addition to the federal government eleven provinces and territories and over 60 municipalities have open data portals. At the municipal level Vancouver has been in the forefront of municipal open data - Vancouver's open data portal was initiated in September 2009.  In November 2009  the City of Toronto launched Toronto.ca/open, the City of Toronto's official beta data set catalogue, which provided open access to city data.  In January 2010 the City of Edmonton opened Edmonton's open data catalogue, which made city data including geospatial data openly available.  In 2010 Ottawa created an Open Data Ottawa site to encourage digital innovation, improved service delivery, and stimulation of economic growth.

A major motivation for open data has been government transparency.  But there is also evidence that open geospatial data contributes to the economy.  In 2008  Australia and later New Zealand commissioned studies of the contribution of spatial data to the national economy that have concluded that with appropriate government policies the contribution to the GDP, estimated to be on the order of 1%, could be doubled.  In 2015 Natural Resources Canada released the Canadian Geomatics Environmental Scan and Economic Value Study that estimated the contribution of the geospatial sector to the Canadian economy to be on the order of $21 billion.

Current state of open SDIs in Canada

Interoperability is key for an effective SDI. The inability to easily share data is a serious constraint on the value that can be derived from it. Gordon presented a simple SDI interoperability maturity matrix. Most municipalities probably fit into what he called syntactic interoperability, the ability to share data using common file formats and APIs.  Some have ventured in sharing data at the semantic level, which means recognizing content through shared data models such as the Canadian Municipal Data Model (CMDM), National Road Network (NRN), and NENA standards for 9-1-1.  A few are venturing into addressing the issue of different names for the same objects in different jurisdictions or in different disciplines.

Patterns of use for SDI include mapping and visualization, monitoring, field mobility, data management, analytics, sharing and collaboration, decision support, citizen engagement, and design and planning. 

Perhaps the top challenge for local governments, who hold the data that is most directly relevant to citizens, is making them aware of what is available and how to use is to address their every day concerns. Gordon presented some examples across Canada of interesting open data portals: Kamloops, British Columbia; Saint John, New Brunswick; Halifax Regional Municipality, Nova Scotia, which have made a lot of geospatial and other data available on open portals; St Albert, Alberta which enables citizens to report broken infrastructure and track progress in resolving issues; Regina, Saskatchewan which also makes a lot of data available on an open portal; Red River Planning District, whose site is heavily used during the annual Red River flood season; Brampton, Ontario, a poster child for open data and citizen engagement; Repentigny, Quebec, which enables users to easily determine the availability of municipal services close to where they live or intend to live; Prince Edward Island Hydro, which shows current electricity outages; and Mount Pearl, Newfoundland, whose portal include a parcel map in addition to roads and other basic map layers.

I would suggest that another data layer that should be part of every comprehensive SDI and that is missing in virtually all local, provincial, and federal SDIs is accurate maps of underground infrastructure in public right-of-ways.  Not knowing the location of underground cables and pipes has important implications for citizen safety and the reliable delivery of essential services.

In summary, local governments are traditionally responsible for local services such as safety, infrastructure, environment, and recreation that directly impact citizens' daily life. But citizens are often not aware of available services.  Local government can improve citizen engagement by making their services to more easy to use, understandable, and relevant by providing them in visual form via web pages and web apps.

Is it ethical to bury dangerous infrastructure in the public right-of-way without accurate maps ?

This is a readable version of a video that I submitted to the EthicalGEO site.

Without accurate maps of where underground infrastructure is located, every construction project has the potential to become a disaster site. Unlike the aviation industry where reliable data is collected and is accessible to investigators to prevent disasters from happening in the future, there is limited access to data about the location of underground infrastructure and what data is accessible is often inaccurate, out-of-date and incomplete with the result that serious incidents during construction with injuries and fatalities occur again and again.

Just about every month the news carries reports of explosions caused by damage to underground utilities during construction excavation. In the last few months of this year there have been explosions in Murrieta, California (July) where a utility worker was killed and 15 others injured, downtown San Francisco (February), Durham, North Carolina (May), and I could go on. These incidents are more frequent than many people realize.

This is not an impossible problem. A number of cities, regions and countries around the world have recognized the importance of accurate information about the location of underground infrastructure and implemented processes to reduce the risk of these events. For example, comparing the United States and Japan reveals a startling difference in the number of incidents of underground utility damage during construction. The number of incidents in the U.S. is about 400,000 per year (roughly one every minute). For all of Japan the number of incidents in 2016 was 137. Clearly something can be done to reduce the risk for construction workers and the public.

Returning to the comparison with the aviation industry, when major airplane crashes occur, such as the recent Boeing 737 Max 8 incidents, there is highly accurate data accessible to investigators to determine the cause and implement measures to prevent similar crashes in the future. Annual statistics show that fatalities per passenger mile in the airline industry have dropped dramatically from its high in 1929 and continues to drop. In contrast in the case of underground infrastructure there is limited access to location information and the data that is available is often inaccurate, out-of-date, and incomplete.  The number of incidents of underground utility damage is not decreasing.

How do we begin to address this issue cost-effectively ? It is estimated that in the U.S. about $10 billion is devoted annually to locating underground infrastructure prior to and during construction. But this location information is rarely shared, with the result that the same underground utilities are located over and over again. If policies, organizational structures and technologies were applied to capturing and sharing the location of utilities and other infrastructure exposed during construction, this could be a cost-effective way to begin the process of incrementally creating accurate maps of underground infrastructure and making it possible to share this information with the people who need it most, planners, designers, excavators and construction contractors.

Over the years I have personally compiled information on 25 jurisdictions in the Americas, Europe, and Asia Pacific that have implemented various policies and organizational structures for sharing information about the location of underground infrastructure. These range from government mandated measures to private companies, industry associations, and voluntary consortia.

The concept I am proposing is to develop a community to share information about alternative policies, organizational structures, and technologies for sharing the information about the underground infrastructure that is exposed prior to and during construction.  Based on the premise that one size does not fit all, this community would share information about what they have done to enable sharing of information about the location of underground infrastructure.  Governments, private companies, consortia, industry associations, airports, universities, and others who are concerned about improving the accessibility and quality of location data for underground infrastructure would be invited to participate.  The ultimate objective would be to begin making a dent in the number of incidents of underground utility damage and the attendant casualties.

If you agree with the premise that it is unethical to bury dangerous infrastructure in the public right-of-way without accurate maps,  I encourage you to go to EthicalGEO site, watch my video and then make sure you rate it - not based on its quality, it's my first video - but on its content.  This will contribute to raising the profile of this very serious issue in North America.

Geospatial + BIM interoperability essential for the development of smart cities

Integrated geospatial and BIM is increasingly being recognized as essential for full lifecycle construction and for enabling urban digital twins.  At this year's Geo Business in London the importance of integrating these technologies was asserted by several speakers.  From the perspective of developing smart cities, Hong Kong has made integrating these technologies a policy priority for its goal of becoming a smart city.

In an award winning paper at a 2011 conference organized by Britain’s Association for Geographic Information (AGI), Ann Kemp, then head of GIS at Atkins Global, the design and engineering firm, asked the question ‘BIM isn’t geospatial — or is it?’ and then argued that integration of geospatial and BIM was essential to address the challenges of the 21st century.  At that time within the UK construction company this was a radical suggestion, but since then the need to integrate geospatial and BIM has been gaining traction in the construction industry.  Among the construction vendor community it was adopted by Bentley, Hexagon, and Trimble a number of years ago and in 2017 Autodesk also jumped on board, forming an alliance with ESRI.  At this year's Geo Business event in London the importance of an integrated geospatial and BIM approach in construction was recognized by several speakers.  For example, Marek Suchocki, Autodesk argued that GIS and BIM are not separate, quite a change for Autodesk compared to a couple of years ago.

Hong Kong has the highest population density (26,100 per km²) in the world.  In Hong Kong 50% of the construction industry is government providing government with a key role in moving the entire construction industry, both public and private, forward. The city is quite advanced in adopting BIM.  BIM is mandatory for projects over HK$30 million. The city has developed a BIM Data Repository prototype to allow BIM models of public structures to be shared among government departments and with the public.  BIM has been accepted for General Building Plan submission (permitting) and all of this has been done in collaboration with the Construction Industry Council (CIC).  Finally a study of BIM/GIS integration has been completed.

In his inspiring talk at Geo Business Thomas Chan, Director of Lands, Hong Kong SAR Government, asserted geospatial has to go hand in hand with BIM in creating the common spatial data infrastructure (CSDI) that will underpin Hong Kong as a smart city. As a basis for moving toward a smart city Hong Kong has adopted common spatial data infrastructure,  3D GIS city model, and open data as public policies.  The city has already initiated a pilot open CSDI data portal with over 70 data types available.   But the BIM-GIS integration study found that it is currently difficult to bring BIM models into GIS.  Thomas Chan mentioned the OGC standards CityGML and IndoorGML as essential smart city standards.  Research has shown these standards have some incompatibilities with buildingSmart BIM standards. He is strongly encouraging the geospatial and BIM communities to collaborate to ensure that BIM models submitted to the city can be easily brought into the city's CSDI.

I would suggest that the most important takeaway from this is that in addition to the now widely recognized benefits of geospatial+BIM integration for the construction industry, it is also essential for creating a common spatial data basis for smart cities.  If we cannot resolve AEC+geospatial interoperability now through collaborative work between the two communities, we will continue to be plagued by this issue for decades to come much as we have been by CAD/GIS incompatibility for the past 25 years.

City regulation reduces underground utility damage during excavations

Every year there are 400,000 incidents of damage to underground utilities during excavation in the U.S.  This is a world wide problem but some jurisdictions have found ways to reduce the number of underground utility hits.  For example, in 2016 Japan recorded 134 instances.  Another example is the City of Calgary which requires all network operators with underground infrastructure under public rights-of-way to submit to the city electronic as-builts showing the location of newly installed network equipment.  I have just received a copy of the City of Calgary Bylaw governing utilities in public rights-of-way.  It provides a model for any jurisdiction that wants to improve the quality of its information about the location of underground utilities. 

A number of years ago I did some work with a Calgary electric power utility involving replacing a paper-based records management system with one in which all geospatial data was stored in an Oracle RDBMS.  As a result the utility reduced its as-built and update backlogs to 24 hours.  This made it possible for the utility to provide up-to-date cable location information to the City of Calgary - referred to as Joint Utility Mapping Project (JUMP).  At that time the utility realized significant benefits from the shared underground utility information.   First of all, improved quality of service. A concrete example that every utility or telco can relate to is one-call. Prior to implementing their geospatial system, the utility maintained a fleet of 20 or so vans and roughly the same number of staff whose sole responsibility was cable locate which involved going out to the sites of a proposed excavations to identify where electrical cables and other infrastructure were to help excavators avoid damaging them. Before the JUMP shared database for very 1000 calls they received from contractors planning to excavate, on average there were nine incidents of damage or "hits", where the excavator dug up a cable and caused a power outage. After the JUMP implementation, the "hit" rate dropped 36-fold to 0.25 per 1000 calls. In addition because there was a single JUMP data store containing the location of all facilities in the city, they were able to reduce their cable locate fleet to something like two vans instead of 20, which saved the utility a not inconsiderable amount of money.  Secondly, the electric power regulator in Alberta was much happier because they saw an improvement in the quality of the utility's facilities data. Every year they required utilities to undergo an audit, where an independent auditor took a sample of facilities data out into the field and compared it with reality. The auditor reported something like 99.6% reliability, which is remarkable given that 70-80% is more typical of the industry.

I have just had a chance to go through the latest amended version of the city Bylaw (17M2016 with amendments in 2017 and 2018) the relevant details of which I thought it would be worthwhile to share.  The purpose of the Bylaw is to define how a network operator can access City rights-of-way such as roads for purposes of constructing, maintaining or operating its equipment including telecommunication, electrical, natural gas, steam, water wastewater and storm water facilities and pipelines.

The Bylaw includes provisions with some similarities to other jurisdictions in North America regarding existing infrastructure.  A network operator is required to provide the 3D location, line and elevation, of its equipment on public rights-of-way to the City within 5 business days of receiving the request from the City.  If requested the network operator must physically identify the location of its equipment by marking the service corridor and using paint, staking or another suitable method for identification.

The unique and interesting parts of this bylaw relate to new infrastructure. It requires submission of electronic as-builts by network operators, provides for on-site inspections to verify the as-builts, and assigns costs and liabilities for underground equipment whose location as reported in as-builts is unreliable.

The bylaw requires that each network operator submit as-built drawings in electronic format, typically DWG files, to the City within 60 calendar days following completion of installation of its equipment on a public right-of-way.  The as-builts are required to comply with two key provisions

1. The equipment is less than 35 centimeters horizontally and vertically from the centre line approved in the utility alignment permit
2. It adheres to the CSA S250 quality standard. 

The bylaw appears to have real teeth.  The City reserves the right to carry out on-site inspections the cost of which is shared between the network operator and the City.  The network operator is required to give the City 3 days’ notice prior to completion of work to allow for scheduling of the inspection.  If during an inspection (or at any other time) the City identifies deficiencies in the network operator’s compliance, the City can declare the equipment non-compliant.  The City can then take steps to ensure network operator does whatever is necessary, at the network operator's cost, to bring the equipment into compliance.  Specifically a network operator must pay for 100% of the direct costs for relocations of non-compliant equipment as well as indirect costs including any damages, liabilities, re-design costs and associated delay costs incurred by other participants in a public right of way resulting from the network operator's non-compliant equipment.

I see this as a model for any jurisdiction that wants to improve the reliability of the information about the location of underground utilities in public right-of-ways.