A Stakeholder Led Accuracy Assessment System for Utility Location

In the UK alone there are many millions of miles of underground utilities and records concerning their location are often inaccurate, incomplete, or non-existent. As well as posing significant health and safety problems to construction personnel, this problem brings with it large social and financial costs. This has led to increasing use of Ground Penetrating RADAR (GPR) for utility location, but without detailed consideration of its efficacy in terms of location accuracy. Therefore, Mapping the Underworld (MTU), a multi-university research project aimed at ensuring improved accuracy in utility location, has been actively engaged in stakeholder consultation. As well as providing much useful data on stakeholder needs, this is also providing a methodology for the assessment of GPR utility location in terms of the factor of most importance to them - the degree to which the equipment provides location within their own accuracy requirements. Also, in order to provide consistency in the assessment methodology, MTU intends to construct a state-of-the-art test facility for assessing location equipment accuracy within tight tolerances. This will yield a combined methodology for reliable testing of location equipment, coupled to an accuracy assessment system weighted in a manner acceptable to stakeholders.