Expert View: Unearthing the UK’s buried secrets

Project Iceberg is a collaborative initiative that hopes to demonstrate the benefits of standardising information about buried assets.

Previously I’ve written about how the UK is falling behind in relation to the serious lack of information about the assets beneath our cities and the unco-ordinated way this subsurface space is managed. This persistent problem has been most recently highlighted through Project Iceberg.

Iceberg is a collaborative project between Ordnance Survey, the British Geological Survey and Future Cities Catapult, which explored the issues associated with discovering relevant data about the ground’s physical condition and the assets housed within it. The overall aim is to show the value of producing interoperable data that is suitable for modern, data-driven decision-making processes. Ideally, we’d have a combined above/below-ground data model that can be used by the industry for shared operational and innovation activities.

Achieving this ambition raises several key challenges. The big one is the adoption of industry standards for collecting underground asset data. This void has resulted in varying attitudes towards collaboration and sharing, and has seen some underground asset data becoming a revenue stream for some of the more enterprising utilities. What may be needed to bring these approaches together is regulation.

The absence of standards governing the collection of underground data means decision-makers working on cross-sector domain projects have to untangle the web of data available. For example, utilities adopt different data conventions, which causes an overall disparity in the quality of the data when brought together. Much of it needs to be deciphered by the end user and reclassified to be made consistent. With 300 organisations from different sectors currently allowed to lay assets in the UK, you get a sense of the extent of the challenge faced. However, data from across the different sectors will ultimately yield larger benefits.

Given these challenges, it’s fair to say the first version of the data model is not expected to give an absolute picture of what’s beneath our feet, but it would be a step in the right direction. Initial users would have to be made aware of the different levels of accuracy and completeness, and feedback loops built into the system to help improve its accuracy and completeness over time. Improving the method for data capture will also greatly increase accuracy and reduce costs in the long term.

Where Project Iceberg leaves off, the National Infrastructure Commission’s (NIC) Data for the Public Good report picks up. The report references Iceberg to demonstrate the importance of combining the subsurface domain within a national infrastructure data exchange framework. By integrating this with surface city data, it is hoped the potential of new technologies can be realised – augmented reality could be used, for instance, to pinpoint the location of pipes.

Not knowing what’s buried and where causes significant disruption, wasted time, delays in streetworks, possible damage to other utilities and extra repair and compensation costs. That lack of knowledge also presents real health and safety risks to utility staff and the public, so we, the Project Iceberg partners, fully support the NIC report recommendations and are committed to assisting in the future pilot project.

To find out more about Project Iceberg and share feedback, email: projecticeberg@os.uk