In the U.S. in 2017 there were 316,422 incidents of damage to underground infrastructure reported to the Common Ground Alliance in 2017.  In the Netherlands in 2018 there were 41,169 incidents.  Remarkably the number I have been using for Japan (Edson Enohi personal communication)is that in 2016 there were only 134 incidents of underground utility damage.  I have just received a comment from Paul Janssen, GI-standardization expert at Geonovum, Netherlands, that provides more information about the source of that number.

“Thanks Geoff for this article on both Belgium and Dutch activities in this field and mentioning the Japanese reality and their intriguing number of 134 excavation incidents and damages to utilities compared to the 41.000 incidents in the Netherlands. Are we, the Dutch, doing something wrong here? Supposedly there is something to learn from the Japanese approach. And I just happen to be in Japan right now. I am attending the ISO/TC 211 meeting on geomatics so this also a nice opportunity to ask around on the Japanese information system. So I did. Japan has a central Road Management System, ROADIS, sometimes referred to as Information Centre, ROADIC, to plan and manage road construction and excavation processes. The principle goal is to better plan and manage road construction and excavations by providing a central geographical information and data analyses centre. Developed in the nineties under guidance of Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport it went operational in 1998. It’s an online application containing combined information layers on road segments, topography, electricity, data communication, gas, water supply, sewage and metro. Map scale of 1:500 is implemented. ROADIS is carried out by road utilities that comprehensively accumulate and manage the various information layers. Two separate information standards were developed to facilitate interoperable data communication. ROADIS does not have complete Japan coverage but is restricted to city areas in the Kanto region with a combined population of over 42 million. A number of 263000 requests for data were operated in 2016. In 2016 a survey was being executed to find out about excavation damage. Of 180 companies a 107 responded by reporting damages experienced to utilities in that year. And this is where the amazing 134 is coming from. 134 for underground utility elements, like cables and pipelines and 82 for above ground structures. This number is reported to be declining since enquires were started in 1983. How this can be so low when compared to Dutch statistics is still unknown to me but the number is real.”

I should add that I am working on a white paper for GITA that will include information about the Japanese experience in mapping underground utilities and preventing damage during construction which I hope will help at least partially answer Paul’s question about the huge difference between the number of incidents in the Netherlands and Japan.