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Geoff
Ottawa, Canada
Geoff Zeiss has more than 20 years experience in the geospatial software industry and 15 years experience developing enterprise geospatial solutions for the utilities, communications, and public works industries.
Recent Activity
Speaker lineup for the first Canadian Underground Forum
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Without accurate maps of underground infrastructure, every construction project runs a significant risk of schedule and budget overruns and causing injuries and fatalities to workers and the public. Underground utility damage also represents a drag of billions of dollars on... Continue reading
Posted 4 days ago at Between the Poles
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Digital logistics management improves labour productivity on construction projects
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Digital logistics management is standard practice in manufacturing and is best know for enabling just in time delivery (JIT). Now a company in Scandinavia has applied digital logistics management to construction. Experience in applying this approach to several hundred projects... Continue reading
Posted Mar 30, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Modern reality capture technology efficiently provides accurate as-builts for underground utilities
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Increasingly modern reality capture technology is being applied to mapping underground infrastructure. There are two use cases where LiDAR scanning or photogrammetry can be applied two underground infrastructure. The first is when new utility infrastructure is installed and before the... Continue reading
Posted Mar 23, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Faster and safer mapping underground infrastructure using magnetometers mounted on a drone
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Technologies such as ground penetrating radar (GPR) or acoustic locating for detecting underground utilities involve directing some type of signal, electromagnetic or acoustic, into the ground and measuring the reflection off underground objects. A major challenge for these techniques is... Continue reading
Posted Mar 15, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Making Landsat data free and open generated billions of dollars of economic benefits
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Open data has been gathering momentum among governments. First enunciated in the United States, the principle that citizens should not be required to pay twice for government data, free and open access to government geospatial data has been adopted by... Continue reading
Posted Mar 10, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Standards for underground location quality are rapidly evolving
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In the last two years quality standards for location quality of underground infrastructure in the U.S., Canada, U.K. and Australia have been revised or augmented. This reflects the accelerating development of new technologies and evolution of existing technologies. For example,... Continue reading
Posted Feb 24, 2021 at Between the Poles
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British Columbia's ICI Society provides province-wide shared map of underground utilities
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The only instance I know of in North America of a province or state wide database that includes maps of utility infrastructure is the Integrated Cadastral Information Society (ICI Society) in British Columbia. The ICI Society maintains a database of... Continue reading
Posted Feb 16, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Applying quantum effects to detecting underground infrastructure
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Many of the technologies for detecting underground utilities and other infrastructure involve shooting some type of signal, electromagnetic or acousic, into the ground and measuring the reflection off underground objects. A major challenge for these techniques is attenuation. Ground conditions... Continue reading
Posted Feb 8, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Priorities for UK underground utility locating: Better pre-construction preparation and more accurate utility plans
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The Utility Strike Avoidance Group (USAG) has released its 2019 report on underground utility damage in the U.K. The analysis found that inadequate assessment of planned excavations in the pre-construction phase has grown significantly as a cause of underground utility... Continue reading
Posted Feb 3, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Priorities for the underground locate industry: white-lining and better utility maps
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According to statistics compiled by the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) the process by which underground utilities are located (detected and marked) are responsible for 28% of incidents of damage to underground infrastructure during excavation. To better understand locate issues the... Continue reading
Posted Feb 1, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Applying inertial locating technology to mapping and condition assessment of large deep assets
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Knowing where things are underground has become important enough that in a number of jurisdictions around the world including the Netherlands, Singapore, and the U.K., initiatives are underway to create national digital twins which include below-ground infrastructure. Recently there have... Continue reading
Posted Jan 26, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Inertial locating to accurately map LIVE underground gas distribution utilities is a game changer
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Inertial locating is an innovative technology that is used to accurately map underground pipe networks. But to date the technology has required non-pressurized pipes. Now a PHMSA-sponsored project has demonstrated that the technology can be applied to small-diameter pressurized gas... Continue reading
Posted Jan 20, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Colorado builds a high accuracy database of the location of underground assets in the public right of way
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New regulations were released January 14 by the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDoT) that mandates (1) the electronic submission of high accuracy plans showing the location of of underground infrastructure prior to commencing a construction project and (2) the electronic... Continue reading
Posted Jan 18, 2021 at Between the Poles
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Survey finds inaccurate underground asset location data biggest cause of damage risk
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Number of respondents: Contractors, statutory excavators, and roads authorities A survey of stakeholders in the construction industry has reported that respondents identified unreliable (inaccurate, incomplete) records as the biggest source of risk of damage to underground infrastructure. The survey elicited... Continue reading
Posted Dec 23, 2020 at Between the Poles
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A revolutionary source of underground utility location data for SUE surveys
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Return on investment (ROI) studies of subsurface engineering utility engineering (SUE) surveys applied to highway construction projects conducted since the late 1990s have consistently revealed a large return-on-investment from conducting SUE surveys as part of highway construction projects. Studies have... Continue reading
Posted Dec 15, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Can all underground utilities be integrated into a single infrastructure map ?
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The vision of a single map showing all underground utilities and communications infrastructure is shared by many who are involved in planning, engineering and construction and those developing digital twins. But in many jurisdictions there are obstacles standing in the... Continue reading
Posted Dec 14, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Should underground infrastructure location data be included in digital twins ?
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There are fundamental differences between above- and below-ground data which may limit the usefulness of underground data in digital twins. For location data about the underground there are often data quality issues, legal restrictions on sharing privately held data, and... Continue reading
Posted Dec 7, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Estonia developing a national digital twin to increase construction productivity
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Estonia is well known as one of the most digital countries in Europe. At the GEOBIM 2020 conference this morning Christopher-Robin Raitviir, of the Estonian Department of Digital Construction in the Ministry of Economic Affairs and Communications, described how Estonia... Continue reading
Posted Dec 3, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Major benefits of accurate location information about underground infrastructure prior to design
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Blue bars - Construction spending ($millions). Red line - Reported unique damages. Yellow line - Estimated damages. Dotted lines - error bars. Source CGA 2020 DIRT Report The stated objectives of many initiatives focussed on locating underground utilities is damage... Continue reading
Posted Nov 23, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Advances in capturing and sharing location information about underground infrastructure in Europe
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I was invited to participate in a meeting of the European Underground Infrastructure Community this morning. I heard about very important advances in capturing, capturing and sharing location information (maps) about underground infrastructure that are relevant to any jurisdiction attempting... Continue reading
Posted Nov 19, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Preventing damage to underground infrastructure in Denmark
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Underground utilities and other infrastructure are a major cause of highway construction schedule and budget overruns. In addition to construction delays, damage to underground utilities during construction makes every construction project a potential disaster site with risk for workers and... Continue reading
Posted Oct 23, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Latest statistics reveal little progress in reducing damage to underground infrastructure during construction
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The primary objective of interventions such as one-call centres, pipeline safety and other regulations, and national programs such as ROADIC in Japan is the reduction of damage to underground infrastructure during excavation. Collecting reliable statistics make it possible to assess... Continue reading
Posted Oct 16, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Ofwat mandates game changer by making water utilities responsible for 3rd party damage to infrastructure
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The recent PR19 comprehensive price review of the water industry by Ofwat, the economic regulator of the water sector in England and Wales has targeted an aggressive "reducing leakage by 15% within base costs" and provides financial motivation to water... Continue reading
Posted Oct 6, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Advanced geophysical remote sensing rapidly captures high resolution 3D data about subsurface geology
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Uncertain knowledge about what lies under the surface is a major cause of delays and budget overruns on construction projects. It is well known that not knowing the location of utilities and other infrastructure is a major cause of delays,... Continue reading
Posted Sep 22, 2020 at Between the Poles
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Growing gap in electric power infrastructure investment in the U.S. will decrease reliability and resilience of the grid
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Last week the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) released a new report in the Failure to Act series "Electric Infrastructure Investment Gaps in a Rapidly Changing Environment" that estimates the investment gap through 2039 for electric power infrastructure in... Continue reading
Posted Sep 8, 2020 at Between the Poles
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