Local government planners in the New Zealand capital of Wellington have embarked on a project to digitise and map the city’s underground assets on a central database.
The city council is implementing a program called the Wellington Underground Asset Map (WUAM), which will ultimately digitise information on water assets, telecommunication cables, gas pipes and other services.
The move is a project to better manage the labyrinth of underground pipes and cables which are at the core of the city’s infrastructure.
“Over the next few decades, billions of dollars will be spent on infrastructure projects around the city, including water, electricity, Let’s Get Wellington Moving, cycleways and Council capital projects like the Te Matapihi Central Library and housing developments,” said Siobhan Procter, chief infrastructure officer for the city.
“We are embarking on an ambitious infrastructure construction programme with 30 years of development taking place over the next decade.”
The WUAM vision is for a federated data sharing platform showing subsurface infrastructure owned by the council and other utility operators.
Data will flow into this platform and all stakeholders in the sector can have 24/7 access to a federated subsurface asset register or subsurface digital twin.
Since the city was founded all records of these underground assets were kept on paper based systems, many of which still in current use stretch back decades.
WUAM also addresses a national need and is part of a wider project, as there is no central record system for below ground infrastructure in New Zealand.
The experience of rebuilding after the Christchurch earthquake of 2011 emphasised the importance of shared data and compatible standards.
The Christchurch experience exposed how data is siloed in separate utilities, most of which is compiled manually and stored in different formats according to varying standards.
Under the WUAM program, however, essential public assets are going digital in another example of how municipal authorities are turning to digital twinning models to store records and improve planning efficiency.
The planners are following the model of similar platforms in the UK, where there is the National Underground Asset Register, Scotland’s Vault record system, and also Singapore which is a leader in digital twinning.
Current legacy also often results in accidents and delays. In the UK, for example, around one in 65 holes which are dug results in an accidental asset strike which causes around GBP2.4 billion pounds in economic cost, in addition to putting workers’ lives and health at risk.
The UK response has been the National Underground Asset Register, which is expected to deliver at least GBP350 million per year in improved economic benefits through improved efficiency and fewer asset strikes.
