Feasibility of Mapping and Marking Underground Utilities by State Transportation Departments

Feasibility of Mapping and Marking Underground Utilities by State Transportation Departments PUBLICATION NO. FHWA-HRT-16-019

Research, Development, and Technology Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center 6300 Georgetown Pike McLean, VA 22101-2296

JULY 2018

FOREWORD The Federal Highway Administration conducted research from 2012 to 2015 to document issues associated with State transportation departments asserting their responsibility to manage utility installations within the highway right-of-way. The research focused on the use of threedimensional (3D) techniques by State transportation departments. The research addressed the following topics: (1) feasibility of State transportation departments as the central repository of utility data within the State highway right-of-way; (2) benefits of having reliable, accurate utility data available during project delivery; (3) barriers for collecting and managing utility location data as well as strategies to overcome those barriers; and (4) cost to manage 3D utility location data and mark utilities with radio frequency identification (RFID) technology.

The analysis concluded that developing and maintaining reliable inventories of utility facilities within the State highway right-of-way is feasible and provides significant benefits. The research outlined 10 implementable strategies to achieve this goal along with 6 strategies that need development work. The return on investment (ROI) for preparing 3D inventories of utilities could be of the same order of magnitude as the ROI for conventional utility investigations. The application of RFID technology to mark utility installations at the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) is unique among State transportation departments. VDOT started its RFID program as a damage prevention strategy to protect relocated utility installations during highway construction. The average cost of installing RFID markers at VDOT is $0.65/ft of utility line, assuming RFID markers every 25 ft.

The audience for this report includes State transportation departments, utility owners, one-call notification centers, consultants, and contractors.

Cheryl Allen Richter, Ph.D., P.E. Director, Office of Infrastructure Research and Development Notice This document is disseminated under the sponsorship of the U.S. Department of Transportation (USDOT) in the interest of information exchange. The U.S. Government assumes no liability for the use of the information contained in this document.

The U.S. Government does not endorse products or manufacturers. Trademarks or manufacturers’ names appear in this report only because they are considered essential to the objective of the document.

Quality Assurance Statement The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) provides high-quality information to serve Government, industry, and the public in a manner that promotes public understanding. Standards and policies are used to ensure and maximize the quality, objectivity, utility, and integrity of its information. FHWA periodically reviews quality issues and adjusts its programs and processes to ensure continuous quality improvement.

ProStar Geocorp™ ProStar Geocorp™ is a provider of geospatial solutions and services to manage surface and underground assets for the utility and pipeline industries. Its Web-based platform includes threemain components: data collection tools, data integration tools, and a Web-based dashboard application.(68) PointMan® is a GPS-based mobile software application to capture asset location and other location-related data from a data capturing tool or (compatible) mobile device. The application enables users to collect and upload the data to an online geospatial database in real time. Users can also visualize locations relative to other existing infrastructure (figure 31). PointMan® also enables users to georeference photos, complete electronic forms, mark up design drawings, take field notes, and create sketches. The Prostar Geocorp™ data collection platform, which is 2D-based, currently includes mapping-grade GPS receivers that are adequate for most asset management and damage prevention purposes. It also supports survey-grade receivers.

Courtesy of ProStar Geocorp™.

Figure 31. Screen capture. ProStar Geocorp™’s mobile application to record, display, and query utility features.

EarthWorm® is a back-office integration service that captures, aggregates, integrates, and routes utility and pipeline facility data. EarthWorm® receives asset location data from compliant data collection devices that run PointMan®. EarthWorm® provides integration with applications such as GIS, CAD, and mapping services.

Transparent Earth® is a Web-based dashboard application to visualize and analyze utility and pipeline assets based on information received from data collection devices running PointMan® via a real-time interface (figure 32). It covers information such as aboveground or underground assets, as-built information, photos, and documents. The dashboard application enables users to mark up and edit map and tabular data and serve that information to field users via the cloud.

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Courtesy of ProStar Geocorp™.

Figure 32. Screen capture. ProStar Geocorp™’s Web application to view field map data in real time.

The Web-based mapping engine supports OGC open standards and leverages services such as the Web Mapping Service and Web Feature Service standard protocols to serve georeferenced images and vector feature data over the Internet. Although the rendering system is 2D based, the Web-based cloud mapping engine supports rendering of 3D objects via the Web 3D Service (W3DS) interface standard. W3DS provides visual representations (called scenes) of the original georeferenced data optimized for real-time rendering of the objects using Web browsers.

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HRDI-20/07-18(50)E