Last edited 08 Sep 2021

Main author

The Institution of Civil Engineers Institute / association Website

Underground asset register for Britain

ManholeAssetLibrary.jpg

Contents

[edit] Introduction

The UK’s Geospatial Commission has successfully piloted a national underground asset register to improve how civil engineers share data about buried infrastructure. Neil Brammall, CEO of Utility Survey Exchange Ltd and Holger Kessler, Geoscience Technical Advisor, Geospatial Commission, provide this overview.

[edit] Purpose

People installing, maintaining and repairing underground utilities and other infrastructure do not have an easy job. Aside from the physical hazards, siloed data makes it difficult to get information on what lies underground before starting to dig.

The result is a tedious process of contacting numerous asset owners and waiting for responses to get a full picture before being able to start. In emergencies, digging sometimes has to get underway with very little prior knowledge of what will be encountered, increasing the likelihood of accidents.

The economic costs of underground asset strikes and consequent delays to projects in the UK alone are estimated to be £1.2 billion a year. The government has therefore set up the Geospatial Commission to solve the problem of getting access to underground asset data, particularly where there is evidence of economic, social or environmental benefits.

[edit] Pilot projects

After establishing a small research team in 2018 (Kessler, 2019), the Commission started to study similar initiatives, including the ‘Vaultsystem in Scotland (Scottish Road Works Commissioner, 2020) and operational systems in Belgium and the Netherlands.

In April 2019, two pilot projects were launched, one in London led by the Greater London Authority, and the other in North-East England led by Ordnance Survey. The projects brought together asset owners and local authority stakeholders to help understand what a national programme could look like by deploying and testing a prototype underground asset register.The aim was to identify the best approach to scaling the register to a national level, informing what data is required, how it is shared, how it can be updated, how it can be accessed and by whom.

The two pilot registers allowed participating users to log in securely and view a combined map of all buried assets available at a requested site. Even at the pilot stage this included gas and water pipes, electricity and telecoms ducts and cables, sewers, transport and local authority assets and private network assets. Users could switch layers on and off, query the attributes of assets and view cross-sectional drawings associated with points on the electricity network.

To keep the case for initial public investment clear and evidenced, the pilots were strictly focused on three use cases: safe excavation, project efficiency (planning and on site) and data-exchange efficiency. Further use cases, such as flood risk modelling and road works planning, might be included in due course drawing on expert advice from Project Iceberg (Ordnance Survey, 2020). The team also works closely with the Centre for Digital Built Britain (University of Cambridge, 2020), the National Infrastructure Commission (2020) and the Energy Data Taskforce (HM Government, 2020) regarding their initiatives to enable better sharing of data and models of the built environment and energy systems.

[edit] Early conclusions

As of July 2020, the two pilot projects have been a collaborative success. Over 35 organisations have voluntarily shared data and knowledge, with the emerging results based on mutual trust, respect and collaboration.

Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. The next steps are to take what has been learned and apply this knowledge to scaling the opportunity for others to benefit across the UK.

[edit] Update

On 7 September 2021, the Government announced that the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) entered the Build Phase in the creation of a digital map of underground pipes and cables.

Ref https://www.gov.uk/government/news/next-phase-of-government-project-to-map-the-uks-underground-pipes-and-cables-launched


This article is based on the authors’ briefing in the 173 CE2 issued of the ICE Civil Engineering journal. It was published on 6 July 2020 on the ICE Civil Engineer Blog under the title, "Where are we on Britain’s underground asset register?" It was written by Neil Brammall, CEO Utility Survey Exchange Ltd and Holger Kessler, Geoscience Technical Advisor, Geospatial Commission.

--The Institution of Civil Engineers

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