An-Najah Staff

‎ In the UK there are some 4 million kilometres of buried pipes and cables.‎ Some of the water and ‎sewerage pipes were laid down up to 200 years ago,‎ and many during Victorian times.  Any surveying ‎carried out would have been relative to surface features that have now gone.  Further to this, there ‎has been very little coordination between utility companies to map their assets.  This all leads to a ‎situation whereby digging for a buried utility can be quite literally hit or miss.  Dry holes are first dug to ‎find the relevant utility, then the trench excavated has to be dug carefully in case there are other ‎utilities buried adjacent. This all leads to a lengthened excavation process that leads in turn to ‎congestion and disturbance, as well as increased excavation costs.  One answer is to remotely locate ‎the utility and coordinate it into a global coordinate system.‎ 

The University of  Nottingham is ‎involved with two projects; The EPSRC funded Mapping the Underworld and the dti funded VISTA ‎projects. These are both four year projects and research methods that will allow continuous and ‎reliable positioning in built up areas in order to position and re-locate buried pipes and cables. The ‎positioning techniques include GNSS, GNSS simulation, INS, locatalites and smart stations. The ‎following paper outlines the work carried out to date on the integration of these techniques as well ‎as the results of field trials carried out to date.  ‎