The location of buried utilities is becoming a major social and financial issue worldwide, largely due to the ever-growing underground infrastructure, the long history of its installation and the lack of accurate positioning records of existing services. Even when records are available, the term 'accurate' is blurred by the distinction between absolute (precise x, y, z coordinate values) and relative positioning, completeness of utility records and differing perspectives on appropriate measurement tolerances. Additionally, large social and safety costs associated with disruption to construction works and traffic, caused by intrusive utility location excavations or unexpected utilities in excavations, require appropriate countermeasures that allow utilities to be located with confidence and precision. This led to the development of Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE) as a process for combining civil engineering, geophysical prospecting, surveying and data management. This process incorporates minimally intrusive vacuum excavation for the z verification to produce a single package intended to meet the needs of stakeholders. However, no universally-agreed definition exists of stakeholder needs. Equally, no currently-available geophysical location technology can accurately locate all utilities. This paper describes research into stakeholder needs, relating this to current SUE best practice. It then describes complementary UK research that aims to provide advances in the SUE process, via the Mapping the Underworld (MTU) project. MTU is researching the integration of multiple geophysical sensors into a single device able to detect all buried utilities without the need for proving excavations, together with positioning, data record integration and asset tagging technologies.
Abstract