Between the Poles

Modern reality capture technology efficiently provides accurate as-builts for underground utilities

Increasingly modern reality capture technology is being applied to mapping underground infrastructure.  There are two use cases where LiDAR scanning or photogrammetry can be applied two underground infrastructure. The first is when new utility infrastructure is installed and before the trench is covered.  Some jurisdictions are already mandating survey-grade accurate as-builts for new installations.  The second case is when existing infrastructure is exposed during excavation or exploratory digging.  By scanning or taking photos or videos of newly installed infrastructure or infrastructure exposed during excavation when combined with high accuracy method for accurately georeferencing the imagery it is possible to achieve survey-grade accuracy for underground utility infrastructure.  This level of reliability in the location of underground utility infrastructure can transform a project with high risk of delays and overruns into a project with low risk.  In Denmark water companies are applying these reality capture technologies with handheld devices as a way of capturing accurate as-builts (aka records or network documentation) in the form of point clouds during installation of new infrastructure and when repairing or relocating existing infrastructure. I recently had the opportunity to speak with Lasse H. Hansen, Researcher, Aalborg University, Dept. of the Built Environment about these initiatives in Denmark.

Background

Without accurate maps of underground infrastructure, every construction project has the potential to become a disaster site. Incidents of underground utility damage are more frequent than many people realize. In the U.S. there are between 500,000 and 800,000 incidents every year. Every year there are injuries and fatalities attributable to hitting underground infrastructure during excavations. Inaccurate and missing information about underground infrastructure is also responsible for construction project schedule and budget overruns. According to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) missing or inaccurate location information about underground utilities is a major source of highway construction project delays.

Utilities have used LiDAR and photogrammetry for a number of applications involving above ground infrastructure, for example to reduce safety issues and costs when conducting a high accuracy inventory of above ground infrastructure.  Until recently modern reality capture techniques have not been applied to underground infrastructure.  But in the last few years this has begun to change. Since 2018 Lux Modus has applied LiDAR together with an accurate georeferencing device to achieve survey-grade location accuracy in "near real-time" as the pipeline is constructed. The rig used to do this consists of a LiDAR scanner and photo cameras attached to a pickup truck and a device (for example, GNSS + RTK) for recording accurate location. Simply driving the truck along the open trench before each section is filled captures and accurate point cloud and photos. The point cloud and images are uploaded for cloud processing and within a very short time a digital twin of the pipeline can be viewed by anyone with a browser that supports HTML5 including mobile devices. As another example AVUS have developed a reality capture solution that allows the creation of as-builts accurate to ± 5 centimetres from a video taken with an Android smartphone. Using either a local RTK base station or accurately surveyed control points, it is possible to capture a video by simply walking along the open trench with a handheld phone and uploading the video to the cloud.

Reality capture of underground utilities in Denmark

In Denmark two water utilities in the Greater Copenhagen and Aarhus areas are efficiently generating point clouds of underground utility infrastructure using a handheld phone and accurately surveyed control points.  These point clouds are captured for both newly installed infrastructure and for infrastructure exposed during repairs of existing infrastructure.  Novafos, a water company in the Greater Copenhagen area, already has more than 3500 of these point clouds which capture not only high accuracy location of the water utility's underground infrastructure, but a lot more information including the location of nearby utilities which would be a concern for any excavation involving the water lines.

The SmartSurvey app used by these water utilities was developed by LE34.  It allows survey-grade location information in the form of a georeferenced point cloud to be generated from a video captured with a handheld phone using four accurately surveyed control points. LE34 technology is used to capture location data for newly installed water infrastructure and for water and other infrastructure exposed by excavations for repairing water infrastructure.  Novafos in Greater Copenhagen has already recorded more than 3500 of these point clouds. Novafos use the point clouds for quality assessment of the as-built installations of the water pipes. Their GIS team also use the point clouds to verify the location of pipes captured on paper as-builts and to redraw the location of the pipe in the GIS when necessary. .  One of the key advantages of the the SmartSurvey solution is that it does not require the construction team to have GNSS RTK equipment onsite. They only need a handheld camera phone (iOS or Android) and a spray marker. The team simply record an as-built video and move on. Because the process is fast and simple contractors prefer using the technology to record accurate as-builts rather than submit paper as-builts that often don't record accurately what was installed, repaired or relocated. 

Future applications

In Denmark LER is the national one call centre for the exchange of utility pipes and cable information between infrastructure owners and contractors to prevent underground damages.  Since 2005 all contractors are required contact LER prior to beginning excavations to request detailed utility pipe and cable location information in the area of the planned excavation. LER re-directs this request to relevant utility and telecom network owners.

LER mandates a national exchange data model to ensure a consistent and high-quality dataset is provided by network owners showing the location of underground pipes and cables and related metadata. The system bears many similarities to the current systems in Flanders (KLIP) and the Netherlands (KLIC), especially in the use an information exchange data model and providing network location information digitally. In version 1 of LER there were no specifications as to how the data was to be provided, but in LER 2.0 both format and content are specified. These include that the data must be in vector-format and the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) GML standard must be used. Currently the legislation does not specify data quality requirements, but after July 2023 there will be data accuracy requirements depending on whether underground assets are old or new.

In Denmark there has been no national system for recording incidents of damage to underground infrastructure, but that has changed with the upgrade to LER 2.0. Beginning in February, 2021 it will be mandatory for network owners to report all incidents of underground damage to LER at least once a year. For each incident, type of utility and owner, fatalities, injuries, and cost of the damage must be reported.

Electric power utilities are also seriously looking at adopting the LE34 reality capture technology as well. If this catches on with the other utility and telecom sectors, we may expect that in a few years these comprehensive, accurate, and up to date point clouds will be made available through LER to designers, engineers, and excavators.  As the shared database of these high accuracy point clouds gradually grows to include most of Denmark's underground infrastructure, it would be expected that underground utility damage, unnecessary utility relocations and project delays and overruns will decline.

Applying inertial locating technology to mapping and condition assessment of large deep assets

Knowing where things are underground has become important enough that in a number of jurisdictions around the world including the Netherlands, Singapore, and the U.K., initiatives are underway to create national digital twins which include below-ground infrastructure.  Recently there have been important technical advances that are have brought the feasibility of cost-effective mapping of underground infrastructure within reach. The most accurate way to detect the location of underground infrastructure is to (carefully) dig a hole to expose it and then bring in a survey team to survey the location.  But this is time consuming and expensive. It has been estimated that the average direct and indirect cost of a pothole is $30,000. Depending on the technology used to dig the hole it can also he hazardous. Current best practice for remote locating underground infrastructure is walking the site with electromagnetic wands (EMI) or ground penetrating radar (GPR) pushcarts. This is slow, expensive, and hazardous.

Most construction projects are only concerned with the underground utility and other facilities that lie within a few meters of the surface.  But there is another class of subterranean objects that are large and lie deeper.  These include rail, large scale water transmission, and large diameter storm, sanitary and combined sewer systems. The traditional approach to investigating such facilities is CCTV.  These are TV cameras connected to a cable for power and image transmission that are guided down pipes.  While such systems are low cost, they don't capture location data, they have limited range requiring multiple deployments from manholes, and assessment and reporting is manual and arduous.

I have blogged previously about inertial locating and mapping, which relies of accelerometers, gyroscopes,  on devices with memory for recording output from the sensors and a battery to power the device.  Such devices do not require a cable connection for power and data transmission. Inertial mapping technology is composed of an Orientation Measurement Unit (OMU) that contains inertial sensors. The OMU is battery powered and the data logged is stored internally during a measurement run. Unlike other technologies for tracking underground facilities the device does not need to be traced from above ground as it progresses through a pipe.  The device also contains odometers recording the speed of travel.  After a run post-processing software converts the data recorded by the OMU and odometers to an accurate 3D model.

Now a recent a startup in the UK, Headlight AI, has developed a system that builds on inertial technology but adds significant capabilities for mapping and condition assessment of large deep assets.  I had a chance to chat with Dr. Puneet Chhabra, Co-founder and CTO at Headlight AI. Headlight AI's product Telesto integrates inertial technology with wireless communication, LiDAR, cameras, and lights to capture location and high precision 3D point cloud data that allows assets to be mapped and high-resolution LiDAR and imagery to be captures at high frequencies as the device progresses through an underground asset.   Wireless communication enables real-time monitoring of the progress of the device at shorter ranges. In addition, a machine learning application has been developed which helps automate the detection of different materials and identifying and locating defects such as corrosion, calcification, wall deformations, and other common problems.

Photograph of deployment of the system during the data collection phase of the BCIS survey and (right) examples of 3D point cloud produced from the trials

An example where the technology has been deployed is the Bournemouth Coastal Interceptor Sewer (BCIS) project, which is 8 km 2.2 m diameter sewer deep underground with flowing water in some sections.  The BCIS is a critical asset managed by Wessex Water. Its concrete structure was constructed between 1964 and 1971 with an internal diameter of 1,800mm. Due to its location and its surrounding geology it is particularly vulnerable to water infiltration and biogenic corrosion from hydrogen sulfide.

The BCIS is regularly surveyed by Wessex Water to ensure its effective operation. Surveying methods have included CCTV condition assessments, laser profiling surveys, and calibrated LiDAR surveys. However, this traditional surveying method requires person entry and traversing of the sewer by a team of operatives due to the need for calibration targets and accurate registration of the 3D point cloud. Hence, this method requires substantial assessment and planning in order to accommodate the higher health and safety risks imposed on workers.

Wessex Water’s priority in the management of its sewers is health and safety. In many cases access shafts into sewers can be located every 1000m or so, which is concerning if operatives are to enter such dangerous environments. Therefore, person entry into the confined spaces of a live sewer, such as the BCIS, are minimized or avoided wherever possible to ensure enhanced process safety.

3D point cloud of section of BCIS; the image shows how the software can focus on specific parts of the point cloud and measurements can be taken by the user.

Using Headlight AI's technology required 2 weeks to collect the data across 7,692 m of the BCIS, including 13 shaft scans at various positions and depths along the sewer. For the sewer alone 250 GB of data and over 2 billion points were collected. Headlight AI's software made it possible to automatically distinguish different wall materials in the point cloud using a combination of traditional and deep learning algorithms. Furthermore, machine learning helped to identify and locate common defects for follow-up assessment.

The project has enabled approximately 8 km of the Bournemouth CIS to be mapped in 3D without the need of operatives to traverse the sewer. The cost of the Telesto survey was similar in cost to laser profiling and CCTV surveys, while being significantly more informative and less hazardous to workers health and safety. This project has demonstrated that Telesto has the potential to improve the quality and the health and safety of sewer inspections across the water and wastewater industry.

In a very recent development it is now it possible by combining Telesto information with terrestrial surveys and shaft scans to map the key sections of deep sewers in x, y, and z. Further future benefits will be the ability to compare how the 3D structure evolves over time and to conduct change detection. This will enhance predictive maintenance and allow water utilities to make more informed decisions regarding both operational and capital expenditure.

Ofwat mandates game changer by making water utilities responsible for 3rd party damage to infrastructure

The recent PR19 comprehensive price review of the water industry by Ofwat, the economic regulator of the water sector in England and Wales has targeted an aggressive "reducing leakage by 15% within base costs" and provides financial motivation to water industry to improve the quality of its asset data.  This has been motivated by Ofwat's observation that "over the past two decades, despite material technological progress, the sector has achieved little overall reduction in leakage" 

Currently water utilities suffer financial penalties for customer lost minutes from failure of the company’s assets or unplanned interruptions. PR19 extends financial penalties for water companies to cover failures caused by third parties.  This is a game changer  for how the water sector operates because it provides strong financial motivation to water utilities to reduce damage during 3rd party excavation.  As Richard Broome of LinesearchBeforeUDig (LSBUD) put it in a recent article in WWT,  "One area of particular focus with PR19 is asset resilience ... It now treats asset failures caused by third parties in the same way as any other failure of the company’s assets or unplanned interruptions, and the financial penalties that result from customer lost minutes can be considerable."

The implications of this regulatory ruling is that water companies will be financially motivated to increase investment in improving the quality of their location and other data for their underground network assets.  They will also be motivated to find ways to make this data accessible to excavators, possibly through Digdat (Anglian Water Services) , LSBUD, or another sharing service.  Water utilities will need to address the issue of ensuring reliable as-builts are captured for newly installed water assets.  They will also need to find ways to improve the quality of their location data for existing assets, which is a major challenge because some water assets were put in the ground in the 17th Century.

Australian water utility provides open access to water and wastewater network location data

Open data has become a goal for many governments, but is relatively rare among utility and telecom network operators and owners.  In Australia several water and wastewater network operators have made the location of their underground networks open and publicly available.  I had a chance to chat with Charles Moscato, Spatial Information Officer at Yarra Valley Water (YVW) about  their implementation of an open data portal which allows planners, designers, contractors and others to access and download raw geospatial data showing the location of YVW's underground facilities.

Background

Open data has been gathering momentum among governments.  An important impetus was the United States Federal Government where data has been 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 municipal governments.  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.There is even an open data site showing underground natural gas flow and gathering lines in Colorado.

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.  At the municipal level North Shore City, NZ and Vancouver, Canada have been in the forefront of municipal open data.  By 2008 North Shore City had made its water, waste water and storm water network infrastructure publicly available on the web.  Vancouver's open data portal was initiated in September 2009.

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 (such as open geospatial data) the contribution to the GDP, estimated to be on the order of 1%, could be doubled.

Open access to utility network location data

In Australia 12 local governments and water utilities have made the location of their water network open to the public.  The City of Gold Coast was the first in 2014. 

Yarra Valley Water serves over 30% of Victoria's population with water and wastewater services including 764,000 residential and 57,000 business customers. Historically the groups who needed access to the location information about Yarra Valley Water's underground network were (1) planners, surveyors, designers and other utilities who needed to plan around, build near or to connect to water and wastewater assets and (2) excavators and construction contractors who needed to avoid damaging underground utilities during excavation.

The process used by Yarra Valley Water to extract and provide this data was arduous, time consuming and slow.  20-30 request were processed per week requiring one full time person.  The turnaround time was typically about 10 days.

Business case for open data

In addition to a broad initiative at all levels of government to improve government transparency by making government data open, specific business benefits were identified.  The first objective was to make the process of providing accurate location and other data to designers and contractors more efficient freeing up one FTE for more valuable tasks.  Secondly automating the process would improve internal workflows for capturing, updating and publishing data.  Thirdly, replacing slow paper-based processes for data visualization in the field.  Another benefit, whose importance for improving data quality cannot be overestimated, is the ability for users of the data to report discrepancies. Another benefit is the avoidance of potential litigation when data was found to be incorrect.  From a business risk perspective an on-line system simply made access more efficient to data that was already publicly available via the Dial-before-you-dig (DBYD) service.

Data quality

In the mid 80’s to early 90’s the location of underground water and wastewater assets was digitized from paper drawings at various scales.  In Metropolitan Melbourne wastewater assets at 1 : 500 and water at 1 : 1000. In rural Melbourne both wastewater and water were captured at 1:25,000.  Attribute information was manually keyed in which was an error prone process.  The challenge was to find a way to convey to users the reliability of the data.

In 2018 Yarra Valley Water implemented the Australian quality standard AS 5488 - 2013 which provides users with a measure of the quality of location data enabling them to assess risk.  The AS 5488 quality levels are quite different from the U.S. ASCE 38-02 quality standard and the U.K. PAS 128 standard. The AS 5488 -2013 Quality Levels specify an absolute or relative accuracy.

1. Absolute subsurface feature location ±50 mm horizontally and vertically

2. Relative subsurface feature location ±300 mm horizontally and ±500 mm vertically

3. Relative spatial interpretation of position ±300 mm horizontally with indicative depths

4. Unverified and approximate position, roughly ±1 to 10 metres horizontally

About 75 % of Yarra Valley Water asset data was assessed a “D” Data Quality Level, this is either older data (2000s and earlier) or data with no association to a field survey.  After the 2000s the quality of asset location data is assessed at Quality Level C.  Typically this involves a site inspection to determine the location of visible above ground features and inferring the location of connecting pipes.

Open online access to network location information

In 2016 Yarra Valley Water decided to implement an on-line web application that contains up-to-date locations of current and proposed sewer, water and non-drinking water infrastructure in one easy-to-use map.  The site is updated daily with the latest available information and is open to all Australians.  The site was inexpensive to implement because the technology to do this has been around for a long time and was already used internally within Yarra Valley Water. The site provides a web map allowing users to browse the data.  Implementing this site freed up one FTE that had been dedicated to responding to requests for information.

But the most important feature is that once a user finds an area of interest, they can download raw geospatial vector data using the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Web Feature Service (WFS) standard.  This capability allows users to extract data when they need it, whether for planning, design or construction. This capability has appealed to designers, in particular, because it allows them to integrate the data into their CAD or BIM design tool. The significant benefits that result from knowing the location of underground utilities prior to design are well known.

Currently field staff and customers can report errors, but this process is currently arduous and the capability is used infrequently.  There is an initiative underway to replace this with a very simple way to report data errors such as incorrect location, wrong material, or inaccurate pipe diameter.  In the future it may be possible for vetted customers to make corrections to the data directly.

This is an example of the direct business benefits of open data for network operators and to the wider construction community.  It illustrates that implementing an open web portal is inexpensive and can have immediate tangible business benefits.  But perhaps more importantly it provides significant benefits for a number of use cases including utility damage during construction, emergency response, and an essential part of smart cities.

Comprehensive checklist of direct and indirect costs of damage to underground infrastructure

I have blogged previously about research at the University of Birmingham in the U.K. that found that the indirect and social cost of underground utility damage was 29 X the direct cost.  At the Ontario Regional Common Ground Alliance conference Scott Landes, of Infrastructure Resources LLC, offered a checklist of the direct, indirect and societal cost of damage to underground infrastructure.  Articles about the true cost of damage to water infrastructure and telecom infrastructure have appeared in DP-PRO.

Items that may or may not be collected

• External collection costs/agency commissions
• Barricades/traffic control
• Permits (city/county/state/provincial) to install replacement cables/pipelines
• Legal fees and litigation costs
• Exposing the damage for repair
• Materials used in repair
• Restoration of the area
• Actual cost of internal labour
• Heavy equipment used
• Generator/power equipment
• Food, lodging, and travel expense
• Emergency mobilization (contractor/locator)

Time

• Damage investigation, on-site and follow-up
• Internal staff collection efforts
• Out of service complaints
• Insurance resolution discussions
• Overtime for unexpected increases in workload
• Employee time/travel for depositions/trial

Overlooked/difficult to track

• Lost customers
• Customer loss of use (refunds/credits)
• Resolution of customer complaints
• Engineering/reengineering due to damage
• Establishing outage bridge to coordinate services interruption
• Support staff (3-20) for outage bridge
• Workload delays
• Future failure points (damage may weaken system and lead to future failure unattributed to 3rd party)
• Damage data capture and submission (software and/or manual)
• Emergency on call ticket notifications
• Facility owner records updates
• Reporting requirements (FAA, 911, PHMSA)

Soft costs

• Loss of brand confidence
• Negative public feedback
• Difficulty maintaining customer relationships, especially large businesses, with inconsistent services

Societal costs

• Loss of 911/emergency services
• Business closing
• Employee downtime
• Road closures/traffic delays

This is a very interesting list because it provides a perspective on the comprehensive impact on society of disruptions to utilities and telecom resulting from underground damage during construction.

Integrating 3D models and GIS for underground asset management

I had the opportunity to attend the 1Spatial Smarter Data Smarter World conference in London.  A presentation by Seb Lessware, CTO of 1Spatial, of Realworld 4D for BIM and facilities management demonstrated an impressive integration of large volumes of 3D scanned underground data with traditional GIS data streamed across the web for asset management of underground pipe networks.

Earlier this year 1Spatial announced the acquisition of GEOMAP-IMAGIS a geospatial software solutions provider in the areas of utilities/telecom and facilities management, transportation and other sectors. One of GEOMAP-IMAGIS applications is Realworld4D which enables the integration of 3D models including point clouds and meshes from LiDAR scans, BIM models, and high resolution photographic imagery with traditional 2D GIS data.  The application enables streaming access to anyone with a laptop and internet access.

Seb demonstrated an example of a sewer system and showed on a single screen a 2D map of a small part of a city and its sewer system on the left side of the screen, and on the right a 3D mesh derived from a LiDAR scan and high resolution imagery from a photographic record of the same area. The applications makes it possible to simulate walking down the sewer line and follow your progress in all three views. The application also showed the direction of the flow of water.  Seb also demonstrated accurately measuring distances between objects in the sewer line. 

The total volume of data that this represents for all of the city would be calculated in the terabytes.  But users can access small parts of the city infrastructure model without opening the whole model. Seb demonstrated this on a standard notebook with an internet connection showing that this application enables streaming access to huge volumes of data. The application includes a live link to GIS data stored in a traditional GIS and MongoDB for the scanned data.

Furthermore, the application enables showing above-ground and below-ground simultaneously together in a "long profile" view together with a 2D GIS map of a section of the facility. For gravity-fed sewer lines this makes it possible to see the slope in the sewer line and the direction of flow. Clicking on a location on the 2D GIS map instantly shows what the underground and above ground look like along a section of the network.

This was a very impressive integration of 3D scanned data with traditional GIS data to enable streaming access to large volumes of data to anyone with a notebook and internet access. It has application to facilities and asset management of any underground pipe network that can be scanned including gas, water, and wastewater mains. I can also imagine this being to enable creating a network model for underground pipelines from scanned data. 

Seb reported that benefits of this approach are significant.  However, it does require a substantial up-front investment to scan the network, but it is not necessary to capture the entire network before realizing benefits.  Furthermore keeping the scanned data up-to-date does not require recapturing the entire the network.  Only those sections that are changing rapidly or that are of high consequence need to be rescanned.

Pilot for sharing location of underground utilities underway in UK

Every construction project involves devoting significant efforts to locating underground utilities prior to and during construction. But this information is rarely shared and the location of underground infrastructure is recaptured over and over again.  At the Open Geospatial Consortium (OGC) Energy Summit at EPRI in Charlotte, Carsten Rönsdorf of the Ordnance Survey (OS) described UK initiatives supported by the OS to address the challenge of sharing information about the location underground infrastructure.   In particular, he described a pilot that has gone live in Sunderland (Newcastle on Tyne) in North East England that includes almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data.

North East Underground Infrastructure Hub (NEUIH) is the overall initiative name for OS's and Northumbrian Water's underground work in the North East of England. The first phase of this project was a ‘Common Infrastructure Map’ covering a few small sample areas around Newcastle.  This combined map is the first step towards creating the NEUIH.  The current phase of the OS initiative is called ‘Sunderland sand box’ and implements a dataset that contains almost full water, gas, electricity and a great deal of telco data for the city of Sunderland.

In July of last year the OS and Northumbrian Water undertook to create a map of underground infrastructure for Newcastle on Tyne at the Northumbrian Water Group Innovation Festival.  The objective was to compile in collaboration with utilities, local authorities and partners a combined infrastructure map for Newcastle and its surrounding area including water, wastewater, gas, electricity, telecoms and other underground services. The project benefited from a spirit of cooperation - all local utilities and telecoms in Newcastle were happy to share their data and had vector data available to contribute.  The result was a database where each utility was steward of its own data which was shared through a hub. Interoperability was demonstrated with three different GIS systems consuming the combined underground data. The data could be ingested into GIS systems with internet access, regardless of format.    As part of this experiment in creating a shared map of underground utilities, contractors were brought in to actually dig a hole so that participants could experience first had what is involved in excavating to determine the location of buried utility assets.  The OS created a web interface to enable excavation teams in the field to access the data relevant to them via a mobile device.  By the end of the week it was possible to demonstrate a working system that allowed excavators to query the map of underground utilities and use this information during excavation and construction.

At the innovation festival a data sharing agreement was developed that all parties agreed to – Northumbrian Water, Northern Gas Networks, Northern Power Grid, Openreach, Durham County Council, Newcastle and Sunderland City Councils, Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute, British Geological Survey and Ordnance Survey. Access to different data layers was made possible through an API and desktop and mobile device front ends were designed that provided quick access to integrated underground and above ground data to planners and field engineers .

The NEUIH is expected to reduce the need for potholing - it has been estimated that the total cost of a pothole is on the order of $30,000.  It will reduce customer disruption by minimizing street works duration with utilities working together more efficiently.  Northumbrian Water Group has estimated savings of approximately £1m from a fully integrated system. These savings will come from a combination of reduced back office effort to produce safe working maps and plans, reduced costs associated with utility strikes and avoidance of abandoned jobs due to lack of information.

Next steps include a harmonized data model (such as the MUDDI model under development by the OGC).  The system will also support a feedback loop where the excavator in the field can update location information to correct errors for underground utilities that are encountered during excavation and construction.  Such a mechanism would be expected to lead to improved quality of location information over time.  The system will also make it possible to upload supplementary evidence such as open trench photos.

An important issue for any shared dataset of underground utilities is liability.  In the UK, as in North America, the liability for any damage to and resulting from underground infrastructure is generally the contractor's who is required to employ safe excavation practices.  In contrast Carsten reported that in Belgium where the KLIP system for providing location information about underground infrastructure has been in place for a number of years, legislation has been passed that shifts the liability to the utility owners.  In France liability is shared between the contractor and utility owners.

This is a remarkable achievement, thanks in large measure to the high level of cooperation among the local utilities and telecoms.  It will be interesting to see the quantified benefits realized by the shared underground infrastructure database.  Another important metric to monitor is how well the database is maintained.  One of the most important metrics is the backlogs of as-builts and updates.  The longer the queue of backlogs, the less people will rely on the information in the database.

First step toward developing a national infrastructure map to enable smart investments

In its 2017 Infrastructure Report Card, the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) assigned an overall grade of D+ to U.S. infrastructure. Addressing the problem of bringing national infrastructure up to a standard where it becomes an enabler of economic expansion rather then a drag on the economy is hindered by a lack of systematic information readily available to decision makers on the nation’s inventory of infrastructure assets, their location, and condition. Geospatial data and technology are key to providing an accessible platform making it possible for decision makers to have a uniform view of the nation's infrastructure.  Access to this data is constrained by a variety of factors including the lack of interoperability across systems and proprietary rights. Also, data is often not comparable.  Consequently, infrastructure challenges cannot be assessed in an integrated way or communicated effectively to the relevant decision-makers and constituencies.

Initiative to create a national infrastructure map

To begin to address this challenge National Academy of Public Administration (NAPA), Arizona State University (ASU), the American Geographical Society (AGS), and the National Academy of Construction (NAC) partnered to put on an event to convene leaders in public administration, infrastructure development, geography, geospatial, and data integration/open data. Entitled "Building a Shared Map of the Nation’s Infrastructure to Enable Smart Investments" , the event was held at Arizona State University in Tempe, Arizona.

By way of background NAPA is a congressionally chartered, non-partisan organization with a mandate to make government work better.  After the last presidential election NAPA decided to get out of Washington and talk to people in different levels of government across the country.  NAPA talked to local government people in Sacramento, Austin, Syracuse, and in Virginia and came to the conclusion that there is a need for a national strategy for infrastructure.  Infrastructure is local, but data with the granularity that is required is not available.  Data is uneven, is not integrated and is basically not interoperable.  The challenge is not technical, but one of leadership and effective public administration.  The need for a national strategy was reinforced by the Trump administration's infrastructure plan which appears to only provide federal support for state initiatives.

State of U.S. infrastructure

Introduced by Terry Gerton, President and CEO of NAPA and Jonathan Koppell, Dean, College of Public Programs, Arizona State University, the keynote was delivered by Greg DiLoreto, Former President, American Society of Civil Engineers, who provided an overview of the challenge from the perspective of the latest American Society of Civil Engineers report card.

• Aviation D : Two million passengers are served daily bu U.S. airports, but congestion is growing and it is expected that 24 of the top major airports may experience "Thanksgiving-peak traffic volume" at least one day a week.
• Bridges C+ : The U.S. has 614,387 bridges of which 9.1 % or 56,000 were structurally deficient in 2016.
• Dams D : 17% of U.S. dams or 15,498 have been identified as high-hazard potential dams.  Nationwide, 73 dams failed between 2010 and 2015.
• Drinking water D : There are an estimated 240,000 water main breaks in the U.S. every year and 6 billion gallons of treated drinking water are lost every year.
• Energy D+ : There were 3,571 power outages in the U.S. in 2016. Most electric power infrastructure has exceeded its life-expectancy.
• Hazardous waste D+ : There are over 18,000 hazardous waste sites in the U.S. 53% of the American population live within three miles of a hazardous waste site.
• Inland waterways D : The U.S. has 25,000 miles of inland waterways. 49% of vessels experience delays across the waterway systems.
• Parks and recreation D+ : Seven of ten Americans use park facilities on a regular basis. About $11.9 billion in maintenance has been deferred by the National Park Service because of underfunding.
• Rail B : The U.S. rail industry invested $27.1 billion in infrastructure in 2015. Rail was one of the brighter spots on the report card.
• Roads D : America's road are often congested resulting in Americans spending 6.9 billion hours, or 42 hours per person, stuck in traffic every year.  The The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) estimates that over half of the deaths that occur on America's roadways can be blamed on poor road conditions.
• Schools D+ : There are about 100,000 schools in the U.S., serving 50 million K-12 students every day.  About a quarter of public schools are rated to be in fair or poor condition.
• Solid waste C+ : Americans generate 258 million tons of municipal solid waste every year of which 53% ends up in landfill.
• Transit D- : Transit in America is losing ridership in some regions, the result of chronic underfunding which has generated a $90 billion maintenance backlog.

The state of much U.S. infrastructure is poor because of chronic underfunding.  Greg pointed out that China spends more on its infrastructure than North America and Europe combined.  The only real bright spot in the 2017 report card is rail.  There are slight improvements in seven of the categories the ASCE tracks.  But in three sectors the ASCE's lower grade reflects a worsening assessment. Transit, solid waste and parks and recreation have seen a decline since the last report in 2013.  For 2016-2025 the ASCE estimates that there is an investment gap of about $ 2 trillion.  This is the difference between the actual allocated funding and what is needed. 

 

Substandard infrastructure reduces the income of every American.  The ASCE estimates that failure to act will result in a loss of $3.9 trillion to the U.S. economy, which translates to a loss of $3400 per year per family.  The ASCE estimates that to bring U.S. infrastructure up to an acceptable standard would require investment equivalent to a latte per day, or $4 per day, per family. 

 

To fund infrastructure properly requires increasing investment from the current 2.5% of GDP to 3.5%.  Greg emphasized that this will require increased investment from all levels of government and the private sector.  Greg suggested some ways to improve how infrastructure is funded. First, congress should raise the federal motor fuel tax.  This would increase funding of federal highways through the Highway Trust Fund.  Secondly,  the contribution from the federal government should be increased.  When the interstate highway system was built during Dwight D Eisenhower's administration, the federal government provided 90% of the funding.  Since then the funding ratio has been inverted.  Greg also emphasized that when highways are built, full lifecycle cost analysis needs to become standard practice.

 

The good news is the message about the importance of infrastructure to the economy is getting out.  A recent survey found that 87% of Americans think that the federal government should increase its investment in infrastructure.

Monitoring integrity of water networks with satellites

I am at HxGNLive in Las Vegas this week.  One of the several very interesting presentations with important implications for a number of industries is a talk by Massimo Zotti of Planetek.  He described an application called Network Alert that uses satellite observations to monitor ground displacements including subsidence with millimeter precision.  An application of this technology is water utilities who use it to look for subsidence and other ground displacements which are symptoms of water leaks.

Network Alert uses Sentinal-1 satellites whose frequent revisits over the same area allow changes in land cover to be closely monitored.  Sentinel-1’s C-band synthetic aperture radar provides ‘radar interferometry’ by combining two or more radar images over the same area to detect changes occurring between acquisitions. Interferometry allows for the monitoring of even slight ground movement – down to a few millimetres – across wide areas.

Network Alert uses radar interferometry to provide accurate, current information about ground instability and displacements in a water pipeline network that indicate leaking pipes. It alerts the utility to prioritize inspection and maintenance activities.  Monthly updates provide accurate information based on continuous satellite monitoring of ground movement and displacement.  For example, over one and a half years a 3 cm subsidence was evidence of a substantial leak.

New research on the cost of hitting underground utilities

Important new research on the reliability of the generally available technology for detecting and gelocating underground utility infrastructure and the costs of hitting utilities during excavation (known as strikes in the UK) was presented at the Year in Infrastructure 2016 conference in London.   Dr. Nicole Metje, Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at the University of Birmingham,  presented some of her most recent research on a major problem affecting the construction industry worldwide.

Background: utility strikes in the UK

About 4 million excavations are carried out on the UK road network each year to install or repair buried utility pipes and cables. Not knowing the location of buried assets causes practical problems that increase costs and delay projects, but more importantly, it increases the risk of injury for utility owners, contractors and road users. The problems associated with inaccurate location of buried pipes and cables are serious and are rapidly worsening due to the increasing density of underground infrastructure in major urban areas.  In the U.S. it is estimated that an underground utility is hit about every minute and underground utility conflicts and relocations are the number one cause for project delays during road construction.

The standard tools in the U.K. for detecting underground utilities are the cable avoidance tool known as CAT. The CAT can detect signals naturally radiating from metallic services or in conjunction with a Genny that applies a distinctive signal that the CAT can detect.  The adoption of ground penetrating radar is increasing, but compared to CAT it remains relatively expensive and requires trained operators.

Underground asset detection is the last frontier of remote sensing.  In the U.K. it has been perceived as a serious problem since at least a decade ago.  The Mapping the Underworld (MTU) project was initiated in 2004 to develop a multi-sensor platform to locate and map in 3-D the location of all buried utility assets - without excavation.  The 10-year research program, which was largely funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), involves the University of Birmingham, University of Bath, British Geological Society, Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Univeristy of Leeds, Newcastle University, University of Sheffield, University of Southampton, and UKWIR. The project concluded that a combination of multiple technologies is essential for the reliable detection of the buried assets.   The project aimed to develop a remote sensing platform that combined several detection technologies together with software that optimizes the combined data.  To achieve a 100% location success rate without disturbing the ground is the 'holy grail' of underground remote sensing.   The benefits of knowing where underground infrastructure are well documented.

Since then, a second major multi-disciplinary, multi-university research project, Assessing the Underworld (ATU) has been funded,  largely by the EPSRC. The project aims to create prototype multi-sensor devices that will enable the condition of underground assets to be assessed remotely without excavation.  The technologies include above ground remote sensing and robotic devices that can be deployed in a water distribution or sewer pipeline.

In 2012 the U.K. the civil engineering contractor's association CECA conducted a survey of its members on the topic of underground strikes.  It asked questions about the technologies used and whether the respondent has internal processes for tracking and estimating the costs associated with utility strikes.  I have paraphrased the questions.

Does your organization quantify the direct costs of utility strikes on a regular basis ?	Yes 57%	No 43%
Do you track and quantify other costs (indirect and/or social) incurred during service strikes ?	Yes 29%	No 71%
Do you have a separate programam or project for determing and recording the location of underground utilities  program  ?	Yes 14%	No 86%
Does your field staff use a Genny as much as it should be ?	Yes 14%	No 86%
Do you think underground utilities would still be damaged during excavation if your staff used a Genny as often as it could be ?	Yes 0%	No 100%

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This suggests that even the limited (see below) tools available today for underground detection are not used to their fullest extent.  The direct costs of utility strikes are still not quantified and tracked in many firms, and very few firms are aware of the indirect costs associated with utility strikes.  Probably as a result of not knowing the costs, very few firms have an explicit program for geolocating underground utilities.

Risk of underground utility strikes

Dr. Metje presented new results based on her research on utility strikes in the U.K.  She pointed put that unlike the U.S. where collecting statistics on underground hits is relatively easy, in the U.K. it is a challenge.  In spite of the obstacles, she managed to collect data on 3348 strikes defined as incidents during excavation which involved damage to underground utilities.  Some of the very interesting results of the analysis include

• Of 255 strikes where pre-excavation CAT scans had been carried out, in 52% of the cases the utility had been detected before the strike.
• Of 187 strikes where utility plans/drawings (as-builts) had been reviewed before excavation, in 48% of the cases the utilities hit were shown on the plans. 
• Of 89 strikes where the plans/drawings (as-builts) showed the utility,  in 84% of the cases respondents reported that the location of the utility was inaccurately plotted.   16% said it was accurate.

In other words even when it is known that there is utility infrastructure underground, there is still a very significant risk of hitting it - perhaps because its location is not known accurately enough.  It also provides further evidence that, in general, as-builts cannot be relied on, either because they are "as-designed" or because they have not been maintained and do not record modifications that may have been made since the infrastructure was first built.

Cost of hitting underground utilities

Dr. Metje presented important results on the direct costs of utility strikes in the U.K.

Electricity	£ 970
Gas	£485
Telecom	£400
Fibre-optic	£2800
Water	£300-980

 

 

 

 

 

However, Dr. Metje has found that the true costs associated with utility strikes is much higher than this. Direct costs include the costs of sending a crew to assess and repair the damaged pipe or cable.  Indirect costs include the impact of traffic disruption as  a result of the strike, any injuries and other impacts on the health of the workers directly involved or people in the immediate neighbourhood, and the lost custom that businesses would have experienced as a result of the traffic disruption.  Dr Metje's research suggests that the true cost much larger than the direct cost.  Her estimate is that the true cost is about 30 times the direct cost.  This is a startling result which indicates that the cost to society of underground utility strikes is much, much larger than is generally believed. 

Reliability of underground utility detection

In the U.S. the ASCE 38-02 - Standard Guideline for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data is widely used for classifying location information about underground infrastructure according to its estimated reliability.  I've blogged about a major national project in France aimed at classifying information about all of France's underground utility infrastructure according to a standard that specifies absolute accuracy (< 40 cm, 40 cm - 1.5 m, >1.5 m).

In the U.K. Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 128 governs the recording of the location of underground utilities.  PAS 128 was developed under the auspices of the British Standards Institution (BSI) and sponsored by the Institution of Civil Engineers (ICE).  PAS 128 is aimed at the practitioner - surveyors who make their living detecting and reporting the location of underground utilties for construction contractors and utilities.  The primary objective is to reduce risk for construction contractors.  In the UK, unlike the U.S. and Canada where we have one-call centres, in the U.K. if a utility is disrupted by a construction project, the liability lies entirely with the contractor. 

PAS128 has aspects of both the U.S. and French system.  It is similar to the US ASCE standard in that codes (A) through (D) relates to how the location was captured.  The British standard is different in that it adds sub-categories B1 through B4 which specify the absolute precision of the remote-sensed location.

    QL D - Location of underground structures determined by a review of existing utility (paper) records
    QL C - A physical reconnaissance of the site has been performed identifying features of the network are visible above ground
    QL B - Remote detection technology such as electromagnetic or ground penetrating radar have been used to detect the location of the underground facilities. There is a sub-classfication B1-B4 that specifies  the estimated precision of the measurements.  For example, B3 corresponds to +/- 0.5 meters.
    QL A - Verification, typically by potholing

Dr. Metje reported revealing research aimed at assessing the PAS128 standard and also validating the reliability of the MTU (Mapping The Underworld) sensor technologies on a site where underground truth could be determined.   Five commercial companies were invited to conduct a utility survey of the chosen area to PAS128 standard.  The firms were asked to survey the underground utilities in the same area and report location in the form of a map.  This was compared with the results of a survey conducted with the MTU platform.  The firms agreed on the location of wastewater and storm sewers and water utilities (pipes).  But in the case of the location of telecom and electric cables there was substantial disagreement - the total length of telecom and electricity cables detected by different firms varied widely, from 90 to 240 meters.  This is a startling indication of the risk associated with existing underground utility detection technologies.

A new standard relating to underground utility detection is expected to be released in early 2017.  PAS 256 (Buried services – Collection, recording and sharing of location information data – Code of Practice) governs data sharing. 

Source:

WHAT DO UTILITY STRIKES REALLY COST?
Authors: Dr. Lewis Makana, Dr. Nicole Metje, Prof. Ian Jefferson, and Prof. Chris Rogers, University of Birmingham, 2016.