1Spatial Helps VISTA's Drive Towards Streetworks Reduction

1Spatial is supporting the development of a global data model for utility asset data exchange through the VISTA project in Great Britain. The project is predicted to save the UK economy millions of pounds per annum by creating more readily accessible shared information for utility companies.

Inaccuracies in existing utility information and a lack of integration, sharing and reuse of this data means that more excavations are needed to locate underground assets and unnecessary third party damage can occur. The VISTA project is examining innovative ways of collecting, integrating and presenting this utility data, with the ultimate aim of reducing and streamlining streetworks and their associated costs.

The locations of many pipes and cables under our streets are currently unknown. This causes many problems when repairs need to be carried out, including a massive impact on the UK's economy. The cost of locating 'lost' assets has been estimated at more than £1 billion per annum with additional indirect costs, such as traffic congestion, adding several more billion pounds to this total. Reducing the overall number of roadworks by just 0.1% would save millions of pounds and go some way towards preventing the current drain on the UK's economy. By creating more readily accessible and understandable information, the VISTA project aims to make this possible and:

# Reduce the numbers of excavations

# Ensure excavations occur in the right place, first time

# Reduce traffic congestion and associated costs

# Avoid unexpected pipes and cables being damaged, and thereby potential injury or fatalities to workers

# Avoid loss of service to business and domestic customers.

Dr Anthony Beck, the researcher on data modelling in the project commented:

“The VISTA team at the School of Computing at the University of Leeds initially employed 1Spatial's Radius Studio to generate and maintain the metadata for mapping and transforming utility data to an agreed schema, resolving the differences between the different utility models. Radius Studio also allows the VISTA team to address data quality issues by creating a number of data validation rules. The ability to share this metadata through the Radius Studio secure web interface will allow the VISTA team to rapidly validate and enrich the schema in collaboration with the project's industrial partners.”

Dr Mike Sanderson, 1Spatial CEO said:
“VISTA is timely for 1Spatial. VISTA is identifying the issues associated with data sharing and reuse - something that we are passionate about. VISTA will almost certainly reveal opportunities to simplify the data supply chain and we look forward to engaging with the Utility Industry and other stakeholders to exploit this work as they strive to share and reuse data in response to such initiatives as the Traffic Management Act in the UK.”

For more information, visit www.1spatial.com/research/vista.php or www.vistadtiproject.org For more information please contact Chloe Rooney. Tel: +44 (0)1223 420414 Fax : +44 (0)1223 420044 Email : chloe.rooney@1spatial.com