Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments

Recently an increasing number of underground pipes have been established, particularly in city centres, for different applications such as sewage, electricity, gas, water and drainage. How to detect and make a precise 3-dimensional survey of buried pipelines has become a focused issue. This paper fi...

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Main Authors: Zhang, Penghe, Hancock, Craig, Lau, Lawrence, Roberts, Gethin Wyn, de Ligt, Huib, Quan, Yiming
Format: Conference or Workshop Item
Published: 2016
Online Access:https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40669/
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author Zhang, Penghe
Hancock, Craig
Lau, Lawrence
Roberts, Gethin Wyn
de Ligt, Huib
Quan, Yiming
author_facet Zhang, Penghe
Hancock, Craig
Lau, Lawrence
Roberts, Gethin Wyn
de Ligt, Huib
Quan, Yiming
author_sort Zhang, Penghe
building Nottingham Research Data Repository
collection Online Access
description Recently an increasing number of underground pipes have been established, particularly in city centres, for different applications such as sewage, electricity, gas, water and drainage. How to detect and make a precise 3-dimensional survey of buried pipelines has become a focused issue. This paper first of all reviews four trenchless technologies for locating buried utilities with an emphasis on describing their application and limitations. It is found that there is no single technology, which is able to locate all underground utility service infrastructures, particularly for deep buried plastic pipes. Meanwhile, these trenchless detection technologies need to be integrated with positioning technologies to create maps for buried utilities. One of the most attractive positioning technologies for providing absolute global position is Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). However a large percentage of buried utilities are in urban areas, where is not ideal for GNSS positioning technology. This paper evaluates the performance of single and multi GNSS constellations by carrying out a test in a controlled environment. The results show that using combined GNSS systems improve availability in urban canyons compared with using GPS alone. In addition, this paper describes an inertial based pipeline positioning technology called ‘Ductrunner’, which can locate and position the buried objects in spite of the material and depth without extra positioning systems. An approximately 30m long test pipeline has been established to evaluate the performance of Ductrunner. The maximum positioning errors are found to be 8cm in plan and 4cm in height. This shows that this technology is very promising for measuring deep pipes over relatively short distances.
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spelling nottingham-406692020-05-04T17:59:30Z https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40669/ Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments Zhang, Penghe Hancock, Craig Lau, Lawrence Roberts, Gethin Wyn de Ligt, Huib Quan, Yiming Recently an increasing number of underground pipes have been established, particularly in city centres, for different applications such as sewage, electricity, gas, water and drainage. How to detect and make a precise 3-dimensional survey of buried pipelines has become a focused issue. This paper first of all reviews four trenchless technologies for locating buried utilities with an emphasis on describing their application and limitations. It is found that there is no single technology, which is able to locate all underground utility service infrastructures, particularly for deep buried plastic pipes. Meanwhile, these trenchless detection technologies need to be integrated with positioning technologies to create maps for buried utilities. One of the most attractive positioning technologies for providing absolute global position is Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS). However a large percentage of buried utilities are in urban areas, where is not ideal for GNSS positioning technology. This paper evaluates the performance of single and multi GNSS constellations by carrying out a test in a controlled environment. The results show that using combined GNSS systems improve availability in urban canyons compared with using GPS alone. In addition, this paper describes an inertial based pipeline positioning technology called ‘Ductrunner’, which can locate and position the buried objects in spite of the material and depth without extra positioning systems. An approximately 30m long test pipeline has been established to evaluate the performance of Ductrunner. The maximum positioning errors are found to be 8cm in plan and 4cm in height. This shows that this technology is very promising for measuring deep pipes over relatively short distances. 2016-07-27 Conference or Workshop Item NonPeerReviewed Zhang, Penghe, Hancock, Craig, Lau, Lawrence, Roberts, Gethin Wyn, de Ligt, Huib and Quan, Yiming (2016) Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments. In: 1st International Conference on GNSS+ (ICG+2016), July 27-30 2016, Shanghai, China.
spellingShingle Zhang, Penghe
Hancock, Craig
Lau, Lawrence
Roberts, Gethin Wyn
de Ligt, Huib
Quan, Yiming
Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title_full Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title_fullStr Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title_full_unstemmed Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title_short Positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
title_sort positioning buried utilities in difficult environments
url https://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/40669/