Between the Poles – The Geoff Zeiss Archives

In 2016 in the first of several far reaching regulations the California legislature passed SB 661 that created the California Underground Facilities Safe Excavation Board. The primary activities of the board were to develop standards […]

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Recently the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC) conducted a survey of one call (811) underground utility safety and damage prevention processes among contractors in various construction sectors including heavy water/wastewater, highway/bridge, telecom, gas transmission […]

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The Geospatial Commission is building a digital service for sharing data on the location of underground infrastructure – the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR). It is planned that NUAR will provide a consistent, digital map […]

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According to a recent report from the Next Practices Initiative of the Common Ground Alliance the damage prevention industry has reached an inflection point. For more than half a decade, the rate of damage to […]

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In France a national system for reducing damage to underground utilities during construction was initiated in 2013.  The key features of the system are the requirement to notify utilities with the details of a proposed […]

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The Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF) workshops are free virtual sessions for individuals who want to delve deeper into technologies for locating and mapping underground infrastructure. The priority use cases are reducing damage to […]

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The primary objective of interventions relating to underground infrastructure is reducing damage to underground infrastructure during excavation. Different jurisdictions have implemented different schemes for reducing damage to underground infrastructure during construction. It is a well-known […]

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The Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF), Mar 22-23, 2022 is a free virtual conference that brings together individuals and organizations to share information about and contribute to improving the mapping of underground infrastructure. The […]

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The Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF), Mar 22-23, 2022 is a free virtual conference that brings together individuals and organizations to share information about and contribute to improving the mapping of underground infrastructure. The […]

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TThe recently published Digital Underground: Imagining a digitally enabled future is full of insights derived from a four year effort by the Singapore Land Authority in developing a road map for a coherent national mapping […]

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The subsurface is composed up man made infrastructure; utility, transportation, and other infrastructure and the natural environment comprised of geology and geotechnical properties of the subsurface. A comprehensive subsurface digital twin requires a digital twin […]

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In Canada the goal of the Canadian Standards Association (CSA) S250 Standard, first published in 2011 and revised in 2020, is to specify mapping requirements for the recording and depiction of newly installed underground utility […]

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Since 2002 there has been a standard, ASCE 38, for investigating and documenting existing underground utility infrastructure.  Now in the US a new standard ASCE 75 is imminent that will define a standard way to […]

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Maintaining accurate, up-to-date, comprehensive data about assets, above ground and below ground, has been a challenge for utility and communications firms for decades. Now new technologies including machine learning and computer vision – based feature […]

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The Subsurface Utility Mapping Strategy Forum (SUMSF), Mar 22-23, 2022 is a virtual conference that brings together individuals and organizations to share information about and contribute to improving the mapping of underground infrastructure. This is […]

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Vegetation is a significant source of outages for many utilities. In some regions from one quarter to one half of all outages can be ascribed to vegetation. Vegetation encroachment initiated the massive North American Northeastern […]

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Public infrastructure projects frequently experience delays and cost overruns – often due to underground utilities – but delays and cost overruns are rare on P3 projects. Furthermore because P3 projects include not only the design/build […]

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The 2019 estimated national cost of damage to underground utilities estimated by the CGA is approximately $30 billion annually. In a recent report the Infrastructure Protection Coalition estimates that an additional $61 billion in waste, […]

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