When Augmented Reality and Reality Collide
For more than two centuries, utility services have been buried underground with little thought of how to locate them at some time in the future. As our cities densify, we are squeezing more infrastructure into tighter spaces and the knowledge gap in the location of utility services is holding up progress on future development projects. This has created a market for specialist ’locators‘ who use a range of techniques such as interpreting archive drawings and plans, electronic detection, GIS, ground penetrating radar (GPR), potholing and surveying (total station and GNSS) to identify the position on the surface and depth of various services within certain error margins.
Concurrently this need prompted the drafting of the AS5488 Classification of subsurface utility information standard, which seeks to locate existing subsurface utilities and then map where they are for future users. The confluence of high-precision GNSS positioning aided by CORS networks and more recently multi-GNSS PPP services enables non-specialist users to easily locate points on the surface of the Earth to 10cm or better. What if we could cross reference position, with a database of existing locations of utilities and provide a heads up display for users to visualise these hidden services ‘live’ in the field?
Read more in Spatial Source article.
