By Tom DeWitte and Tom Coolidge
Every day, one call systems dispatch utility locate technicians to mark the locations of buried utilities. Far too often, the utility locate technician must deal with the situation of utility pipes and wires missing from the maps and records provided to the locator. Yet when the utility locate technician looks around, they can see a meter or connection box next to the building. The lights are on, smoke is exiting the furnace chimney, and the water is running. The clues 'indicate that the utilities' commodity is flowing through underground pipes or wires. How can this be? How can a pipe or wire be in production, with the commodity actively flowing through it. Yet, the indication of this 'asset's location is missing from the maps and records provided to the technician?
Mystery of Missing Data
Underground utility organizations of all shapes and sizes work diligently to maintain accurate records of where pipes and wires are installed. Yet, for many reasons the locational information about these assets does not always make it to the maps provided to the utility locate technician.
Knowing why pipes or wires are missing does not help the utility locate technician know where to start looking for the buried utility. This is where the utility locate technician becomes a detective using their sleuthing skills and detecting tools to solve this mystery.
Identifying Missing Pipes and Wires
Our utility locate technician turned detective sees in the digital map (See below image) that the gas main does not come within proximity of the buildings, and the gas services are missing.
Yet, on the north side of the building there are three sets of gas meter banks.
Closer examination of the individual meters shows that the dials are spinning. Gas is flowing through these meters.
At this point our utility locate technician extracts their electromagnetic locating device. Using this device, they attempt to locate the buried gas pipe. The device does not detect the pipe. Logic dictates that the pipe is not metallic. It must be plastic! On a 2nd try, the utility locate technician finds a tracer wire and connects the transmitter tool to inject a small current. Using the utility locate device again, a signal is detected; we have found the tracer wire! Like a bloodhound on the trail of a scent, the utility locate technician follows the signal. It leads away from the building and towards the field behind the building.
In the field, the signal branches in two directions. Each is an approximately 90-degree turn from the followed line away from the building. We have found the gas main!
With the utility locating device in one hand and the can of yellow spray paint in the other our utility locate technician reverses direction and begins marking the ground to identify the found location of the missing pipes.
For the vast majority of locates performed in the United States and Canada, our story ends here. The missing pipes or wires are identified through markings on the ground to help the excavator avoid the buried utilities. Yet, in many instances, this information is not shared back to the office to inform the mapping group where their maps are missing critical data.
Locate Generated Data
For several years, some of the leading manufacturers of electromagnetic utility locating devices have offered the option to embed a GNSS receiver into their devices. Most of these receivers are RTK-compatible, providing centimeter-level spatial accuracy.
These devices can generate accurate location data indicating where the missing pipes or wires are located.
If our detective locator was equipped with this GNSS enhanced locating device, they could have generated this data while performing the locate.
So, why 'has the adoption of the data generation capability been embraced across the utlilty locating industry, to allow our utility locate technicians to accurately communicate this spatial location back to the utility mapping group?
The answer is bad data plumbing.
In an industry where utility locate technicians are expected to complete 15-20 locates a day, every minute matters. Spending time aggregating data to be uploaded to a file server is too slow. A better method of communicating this information from the field is needed.
How to Tell Others
And let's not forget the other end of the data file transfer. Someone at the utility must manually access this file server, select the desired file, and download it to their local system. Once the download is complete, they will unpackage the zip file and then upload the data into the mapping group's GIS system. When you are a medium- to large-sized utility performing over 4,000 locates a day, a manual data transfer method does not scale. 4,000 locates a day, is 500 per hour! It would require a team of GIS analysts just to access and download this data.
A more efficient and scalable data plumbing solution is required for both the field technician and the office mapper.
A New Capability
To address the data plumbing issue, several of the leading manufacturers of electromagnetic utility locate devices have partnered with Esri.
Radiodetection, Subsite, and Vivax-Metrotech, in partnership with Esri, will soon provide a new capability that enables our utility locate technician to easily communicate the location of missing pipes or wires to the mapping group.
In this streamlined workflow, the utility locate technician will collect the spatial location of the buried pipe or wire while performing the markout. When the missing pipe or wire is fully marked, pressing the ""Submit"" button in ArcGIS Field Maps will send the data directly to the 'utility's GIS system: no field data aggregation, no files for the office to download and process.
Your Locators Know Where
For many years, the mapping group within a utility has worked with the information they have been provided to accurately map the utility’s pipes and wires. The challenge has always been in getting all of the known information into their hands. They have known that some information has been missing from their maps. But have lacked the actionable and specific information needed to address this critical issue. Without actionable, specific information, the mapping group is unable to solve the mystery of the missing data.
Our utility locate technicians have been the industries detectives who have searched for, and found the hidden treasure of these missing assets. The difficulty of consistently and efficiently communicating this information to the mapping group is the data plumbing issue preventing this flow of critical data. Providing the utility locate technicans with the right tools, and data plumbing to easily, quickly, and accurately capture and then share this information, is the missing piece to solve this puzzle.
Fix the data plumbing and watch the information flow to solve the mystery of the missing data.
PLEASE NOTE: The postings on this site are our own and don't necessarily represent Esri's position, strategies, or opinions.
