Encouraging Innovation in Locating and Characterizing Underground Utilities (2009)

Below is the uncorrected machine-read text of this chapter, intended to provide our own search engines and external engines with highly rich, chapter-representative searchable text of each book. Because it is UNCORRECTED material, please consider the following text as a useful but insufficient proxy for the authoritative book pages.

4C H A P T E R 1 IntroductionBackground to the Report This report has been prepared as part of a study funded by the second Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP 2), which is in turn funded by Congress to provide a targeted, short-term research program addressing key issues in highway transporta- tion. The SHRP 2 program addresses four strategic focus areas: the role of human behavior in highway safety (Safety); rapid highway renewal (Renewal); congestion reduction through improved travel time reliability (Reliability); and transporta- tion planning that better integrates community, economic, and environmental considerations into new highway capacity (Capacity). The goal of SHRP 2 renewal research is to develop a consistent, systematic approach to performing highway renewal that is rapid, causes minimal disruption, and produces long-lasting facilities. The renewal scope applies to all road classes. This report looks at developing technologies and procedures that will help minimize disruption, delay, and risk when trans- portation projects include underground utility issues. These approaches include improving surface geophysical techniques, using existing techniques more effectively, and integrating these techniques with better recordkeeping practices. This work was divided into two phases. The project’s first phase sur- veyed current and emerging technologies and determined the areas with the most potential for innovation and improve- ment. From a ranked list of alternatives developed in the first phase, specific project descriptions were developed for funding consideration through the SHRP 2 program. For the purposes of this report, “locating” is defined more broadly than a contractor, utility owner, or a subsurface utility engineer might understand it to mean. To a contractor or util- ity owner, this term means the process of getting a mark placed on the ground for damage prevention or any other purpose. To a subsurface utility engineer, this term means the process of exposing a utility to precisely and accurately measure and doc- ument its three-dimensional location. Within this document,the broad and multifaceted term “utility locating” indicates the determination of a utility position. In particular, utility locating refers to the following: • Geophysical technology used to detect and image under- ground utilities; • Processes, procedures, and techniques used by field tech- nicians in collecting the geophysical data in the field; • Means and methods of transferring data from the instru- mentation to the data users; • Other sources of information regarding utility location, such as visual observation, existing records, or both; • Integration and validation of data sources; • Formatting and display of data to the data users; • Retention of and recordkeeping practices for the data; and • Use of the recorded data for the next locating exercise at this location. The term “utility characterization” is used to describe char- acteristics of the utility other than location. These charac- teristics include size, ownership, material type, utility type (purpose), age, and usage status (inactive, abandoned, out-of- service, active). It may also include the condition of the utility. Condition can be further subdivided by cathodic state (for metallic utilities), pipe-wall thickness, corrosion (inside and outside of the pipe), wrapping and coating integrity, and phys- ical condition (breaks, tears, and gouges). Associated utility buried appurtenances such as vaults and thrust blocks could also have characterization data. Some characterization data may be obtained or inferred through remote sensing means, while others may require direct means (physical observation through exposure). Other data may only be obtainable through existing records. The term “innovation” can mean introducing completely new methods and ideas. It can also mean changing or increas- ing the use of existing methods or ideas not pervasively used,

5or increasing the geographic extent of those methods. It can mean changing the timing of methods to obtain better results. To meet the project objectives, this report seeks to identify the existing technologies, procedures, challenges, and suit- able approaches to encourage improvement in performance through a targeted series of research projects. A Closer Look at the Problem The increasing installation, maintenance, rehabilitation, or replacement activities related to underground utilities are matched by the increasing need for urban street and highway projects to extend highway networks, reduce congestion, and carry out maintenance and renovation projects. Public rights- of-way, such as highways and streets, are the natural location for utility services that are critical to city and regional devel- opment, and utility providers typically have a legal right for access to this right-of-way. The space within this right-of-way is becoming crowded with utilities, and past practices have not adequately documented the location or character of these utilities—creating project cost, safety, and time issues for renewal projects. While utility locating technologies continue to improve, knowledge of these technologies and their capabilities may not be in the hands of the appropriate decision makers. Also, inte- gration of these technologies is lacking due to the wide variety and differing missions of the stakeholders that are involved in the process, such as state and city transportation agencies, design consultants, utility companies, and contract utility locating firms. Each state has a statute—and none identical to that of another state—that addresses utility markings for safety pur- poses during construction, but there is much less guidance on the responsibilities and procedures for locating utilities for project planning and design purposes. Marking utilities for damage prevention and for design-basis information is dif- ferent in many ways, but these differences are not always fully appreciated. Although there is an engineering consensus standard (ASCE 38-02) (1) to address this problem, this stan- dard is not yet universally used. When roads in a given area are at or approaching full capac- ity, the cause of many major traffic delays is utility work, along with traffic accidents and other street work that disrupts nor- mal traffic flow. Damage to street and highway pavement as a result of open-cut utility work and the increased life-cycle cost to maintain road pavement in an acceptable condition are also sources of friction between utility providers and street or high- way engineers. Unneccessary pavement damage that results when the location or condition of a utility is unknown is even more vexing to highway owners. These three issues have important connections to how the utility identificaton, re-location, and operational phases of highway renewal projects are conducted. Improvements in the interactions involved around highway work, utility location activities, and utility repair work are vital to reduce project delays and costs, accidental damage to utility lines, and damage to street pavements through uncoordinated utility work. Utility coordination committees have had some success in planning for near-term utility work on a street to be repaved, but the need to consider all the possibilities and exe- cute the utility work in a timely fashion before the roadwork commences can potentially add significant time pressures for highway projects. This issue is addressed by a companion SHRP 2 study (2). Another obstacle is that of the reliability of information sources. This question is at the heart of the utility problem. Utility information has been collected over the years in many different forms with widely varying standards of accuracy and quality control. It may have been transferred from plan to plan or database to database even as the original locational refer- ences themselves have changed. While steps are under way to improve and standardize recordkeeping and to verify utility positions, much of the existing locational information on buried utilities must be considered suspect until proven other- wise. In other words, utility lines may appear on project plans, but there are few guarantees as to the accuracy or reliability of this information unless a quality-controlled process incorpo- rating subsurface utility engineering (SUE) has been employed (see chapters 3 and 4 for a further discussion of SUE). In summary, there is widespread recognition of both the need to improve the quality and accessibility of information on the location and condition of underground utilities for design purposes and to prevent utility hits during road and utility work. This report focuses in particular on the impacts of utili- ties on urban transportation project planning and execution, the effectiveness of location and characterization tools already in the marketplace, the potential for improved use of existing tools, and how to accelerate the development of promising new tools and approaches. Future Challenges The utility problems introduced in the previous paragraphs are experienced worldwide and are increasingly difficult to manage as urban populations grow and existing utilities need replacing. In 1900, the world population was estimated to be about 1.6 billion with only 13% of this population living in urban areas. By May 2007, the world population was esti- mated to have risen to 6.6 billion and, in this same month, the crossover point was estimated to have occurred at which more than 50% of the world’s population were said to live in urban areas (3). In the United States, this transition from a mostly rural population to a mostly urban population occurred much

6earlier—around 1910—providing a more highly developed problem but also the opportunity to be at the forefront of the development of technological and administrative develop- ments that could be used throughout the rest of the world. The length of the total utility network (using the assumptions applied in Table 1.1) is estimated at about 11 million miles. This is nearly three times the reported length of U.S. highway miles, which is 3,997,461 miles according to Kane (4), and much of which is in rural areas with few or no buried utilities. To further illustrate that the interaction of utilities and transportation is a growing problem worldwide, Farrimond (5) reports that “every year, on average, utilities dig 4 mil- lion holes in the U.K.’s highways and footpaths . . . ,” “road maintenance is one of the worst regarded services in Britain,” and that the costs of utility work in UK streets is in excess of x1.5 billion per annum (∼US$2.25 billion at 2008 exchange rates), with consequent indirect costs in excess of x3 billion (∼US$4.5 billion) per annum. As urban traffic congestion rises, utility works often provide a trigger for significantly increased congestion and, as the utility networks continue to age, the maintenance and replacement work required on the systems is likely to increase. This is likely to be true regardless of whether a concerted effort is made to improve the poor condition of most underground utilities (see ASCE Infrastructure Report Card http://www.asce.org/reportcard/2005/index2005.cfm), in which case a large volume of planned work will be undertaken, or whether the system is left to deteriorate, in which case an increasing amount of unplanned work to repair breakages and other types of failures will occur. Future Solutions A major improvement in current techniques for locating buried utilities is needed—techniques that accurately resolve the position and type of an underground utility in the presence of other underground utilities and structures, as well as tech- niques that have a reasonable cost relative to the cost of prob- lems avoided. Also, developing and maintaining better records of existing utilities are critical to address those utilities whose material, depth, or surrounding environment make detection and imaging a challenge for existing and future technology. Human resource issues also need attention to ensure adequate education levels of technicians relative to the work undertaken, adequate training in the proper use of equipment, adequate pay scales to retain a qualified work force, and adequate time scheduling for proper operation of the technologies used. Developed technologies also need to be broadly deployed to be effective, that is, all the tools in the toolbox need to be available and used appropriately.Transmission Distribution/Collection Services Total (miles) (miles) (miles) (miles) Gas Gathering 41,000 (6 ) 2006 1,212,688 (7 ) 2005 780,392 (7, 8 ) 2005 2,359,080 Interstate 250,000 Intrastate 75,000 Hazardous 160,868 (9 ) 2003 160,868 liquid Oil Gathering 35,000 (10 ) 2001 177,200 Crude 65,942 (11 ) 2004 Product 76,258 Water 660,000 (12 ) 2002 995,644 (13 ) 2007 854,364 (13,14 ) 2007 2,510,008 Sewer Public 724,000 (15 ) 2006 1,224,000 Private 500,000 Electric 167,643 (16 ) 2006 600,000 (17 ) 2007 400,000 (18 ) 2007 1,167,643 Telecom Underground cable Metallic 382,472 (19 ) 2006 3,194,921 Fiber 217,266 Buried cable Metallic 2,178,320 Fiber 217,322 Conduit system Trench 199,541 Grand total 10,793,719 Table 1.1. Estimated Lengths of Major Underground Utility Services (6–19)

7Several advances are evident that can make utilities eas- ier to locate—such as, permanent utility marking systems and field-deployable global positioning system (GPS)-geographical information system (GIS) databases of locations and attrib- utes—but so are technologies that may increase the difficulty of future utility locating, including directionally drilled plas- tic pipes on curved alignments at greater depths of installa- tion. Recent extreme events, namely, hurricanes and terrorist acts, also have exposed new difficulties and concerns. Trying to find critical buried utilities after a major disaster has obliter- ated landmarks has highlighted deficiencies in current approaches. The threat of terrorist action against buried utili- ties is causing new restrictions on the availability of informa- tion on buried assets. The clear problems faced and the size of the potential mar- ket both provide strong incentives for improved solutions. Organization of the Report Intended Audience This report is intended to document the existing state of prac- tice and state of the art for utility locating and characterization technologies as a means of providing recommendations for future research and development activities and administrative changes that would mitigate the current utility-related difficul- ties faced by transportation agencies. The intended audience for the report is, thus, principally the decision makers and research administrators who are responsible for setting fund- ing priorities and approving future research programs. It is hoped that the report also will be useful as a general review of current and emerging utility locating and characterization technologies, but discussion of many of the technical details has been curtailed so that the report can be understandable to readers with a wide range of technical and managerial back- grounds. References for further information and an annotated bibliography are provided for those wishing to pursue greater detail on the various technologies discussed. Scope of the Report This report concerns issues affecting the delivery of needed transportation projects—issues that are related to utilities located in or adjacent to the public right-of-way. The report has a particular focus on urban area transportation projects where the utility issues are often the most problematic. While technological development is seen as a critical component in creating better project results, it has been observed by many involved in providing input to this report that administrative, scheduling, and funding allocations should also be improved if greater success over a wide range of projects is to be achieved. Thus, the report addresses both technical issues and adminis- trative issues.Layout of Report The report organization follows the data collection and evalu- ation process used in arriving at the targeted innovation areas and the specific project descriptions prepared for funding con- sideration. The introduction sets the stage for the magnitude of the problem and the benefits that improved technologies and procedures could bring. Chapter 2 on methodology describes how the information for the project was collected and the process for determining the technologies that would most benefit from targeted research and development support. Chapter 3 provides information on the current interactions between transportation project owners and utility owners and where the practitioners believe that the process could be improved. Chapters 4 and 5 focus on the technologies available to locate and characterize utilities—providing an overview of technological possibilities and assessing the level of maturity and future potential for the various technologies. Chapter 6 discusses the targeted areas for future work and provides list- ings of those priority actions by different application sectors applicable to the utility-transportation interaction problems— and represents the findings of Phase 1 of the research proj- ect. In chapter 7, the Phase 2 effort to develop specific project descriptions is described and the core text of each recom- mended project is listed. Finally, in chapter 8, a summary of the findings is provided. References are provided at the end of each chapter. Appendix A provides an annotated bibliography organized by sectors of interest. Appendix B lists case histories of successful approaches to mitigating utility-related problems in transportation and other construction projects. Appendix C provides a list of organizations related to utilities, pipelines, and damage prevention issues for buried utilities. References 1. American Society of Civil Engineers. Standard Guidelines for the Collection and Depiction of Existing Subsurface Utility Data. ASCE Standard No. CI/ASCE 38-02, ASCE, Reston, Va., 2002, 20 pp. 2. Ellis, R., M. Venner, C. Paulsen, J. Anspach, G. Adams, and K. Van- denbergh. SHRP 2 Report S2-R15-RW: Integrating the Priorities of Transportation Agencies and Utility Companies. TRB, Washington, D.C., 2009. 3. Wimberley, R., and M. Kulikowski. Mayday 23: World Population Becomes More Urban Than Rural. Press Release, North Carolina State University, May 2007, p. 2. 4. Kane, A. U.S. Highway System Overview. Presented at the ICAF Meeting, March 2006, 15 slides. http://downloads.transportation. org/Kane-2006-03-10.pdf. 5. Farrimond, M. The ESWRAC Initiative. Proc., ISTT No-Dig 2004 Conf. Hamburg, Germany, Nov. 2004, p. 9. 6. U.S. Department of Energy. Transmission, Distribution & Storage. Oct. 2006. http://www.fossil.energy.gov/programs/oilgas/delivery/ index.html. 7. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Gas Dis- tribution Systems Annual Report Data File Fields, Distribution Annual Report Form RSPA F 7100.1-1, Dec. 2005.

88. The total number of gas services in the United States, according to reference 7, is 63,523,945. This number was then converted to miles by taking an average length of one service line to be 65 ft. 9. Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration. Fre- quently Asked Questions: General Pipeline FAQs. 2003. http://www. phmsa.dot.gov/media/pipeline_qa.html. 10. Pipeline 101. Overview: How Many Pipelines Are There? 2001. http://www.pipeline101.com/Overview/energy-pl.html. 11. Bureau of Transportation Statistics. The Transportation Net- work: 2004. http://www.bts.gov/publications/pocket_guide_to_ transportation/2006/html/table_01.html. 12. Brongers, M. P. H. Appendix K: Drinking Water and Sewer Systems. Cost of Corrosion, March 2002. http://www.corrosioncost.com/ pdf/water.pdf. 13. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Distribution System Inven- tory, Integrity and Water Quality, Jan. 2007, p. 13. http://www. epa.gov/safewater/disinfection/tcr/pdfs/issuepaper_tcr_ds- inventory.pdf.14. The total number of water services in the United States, according to reference 13, is about 69,545,307. This number was then converted to miles by taking an average length of one service line to be 65 ft. 15. U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Emerging Technologies for Conveyance: New Installations and Rehabilitation Methods. EPA 832-R-06-004, July 2006. 16. North American Electric Reliability Council. Long-Term Reliability Assessment: The Reliability of the Bulk of Power Systems in North America. Oct. 2006. http://www.nerc.com/files/LTRA2006.pdf. 17. Eleven U.S. utilities reported a total of 296,093 miles. However, the length of underground electrical distribution is expected to be much less than for gas or water, which are fully underground. A fig- ure of 600,000 miles is assumed as the U.S. total. 18. This figure is a rough estimate based on underground electric service being less than half the length of underground water services. 19. U.S. Federal Communications Commission. Table I.A: Outside Plant Statistics—Cable and Wire Facilities. FCC Report 43-08: ARMIS Operating Data Report, 2006.