PDEng position in Smart Utility Registration

Utility service networks are the lifelines for modern cities. Their maintenance and construction are challenging tasks, as busy underground is densely populated with cables, pipelines, and other infrastructures, making construction work a spatial puzzle. As-built network registration is therefore of great importance and considered as a key task by the utility sector.

Registration of deployed cables and pipes is executed often under high time pressure. Safety laws prescribe that contractors backfill excavated trenches quickly after finishing utility line deployment. This thus means that land surveyors often need to traverse across multiple construction sites at the end of a construction workday and register all constructed networks in a short time-window. In addition, survey outcomes also need to be processed, simplified, and tailored by a specialist at the office. This specialist needs to convert the data into information that aligns with one of the many (geographic) information standards applicable and exchangeable between Dutch utility owners.

Since the volume of work at utility contractors increases while the capacity to survey registered pipelines declines, a capacity, efficiency, and data reliability, and safety problem arises for all construction work in the future. The utility sector calls for a solution, wants to reduce costs, increase efficiency, and avoid excavation damages. Siers Infraconsult are also facing the above-mentioned problems, therefore, seeks to investigate whether this utility registration process can be streamlined.