| "Technology Gains or Changes in Practice?" Catherine Carver [email protected] The ongoing challenge for CGA's Emerging Technologies group is to evaluate technologies currently in practice and monitor and track developing technologies in all aspects of damage prevention. In the immediate months and years after the Best Practices was published, equipment manufacturers and software engineers hosted independent test studies in which an audience received presentations for evaluation and hopeful integration in a variety of operations. Many "out-of-the-box" ideas surfaced but few were fully integrated successfully. Today, trying to "determine" what direction might best be used in the area of building buried infrastructure, is no clearer than it was three years ago. Might the entire process be in limbo? No real direction appears to be under consideration and only a few states are even writing law to incorporate Best Practices recommendations, and its fair to say that this is mostly due to the One Call representation of the utilities. Many states are mandating that locators are trained to a state standard. What happened to the progressive companies who were ready and willing to design the higher technologies that would provide various groups with a utopian tool? Where are the multiplatformed sensor systems? The above surface vision scanning devises? The above/below surface audio sound enhancement systems? The integrating GIS/GPS with currently used tools? In the mid 1990's, GPR was on the rise in popularity with the promise of accurate detection of all types of utility conduit. This technology was made popular through outstanding scientific support from researchers such as Whitten Technologies. GPR was responsible for finding, locating the lost sailing vessel, The Monitor, in the shallows off of the coast of North Carolina. GPR was responsible for locating underground tunnels, and in it's most sophisticated moment, a �" gas line in the desert of Saudi Arabia. GPR seemed to provide utilities with a better tool to locate their fiber cable, which consisted of either metallic sheathing around the glass conductor, or in some cases NO sheathing. The GPR would find the outline of the cable and therefore send an image at an alleged millimeter accuracy to the locate contractor when used to find gas, fiber and power lines in the ground. There were no less than 25 products on the market at their peak. Unfortunately, ground conditions were only good for a small percentage of locating needs throughout the country. Rocky, silty, or loamy soils do not conduct a good GPR signal with enough accuracy to locate the majority of the lines in the ground, except in possibly Florida and some southwest desert areas. Even then, the silty soil conditions were not optimum for characteristic identification. Thus, GPR was considered not optimal by most company usages, hence not cost effective. The integration of GIS/GPS systems to locating devices was another grand idea. However, there was a sizeable distortion experienced when the signal was returned to earth via satellite which could offset the utility by as much as six feet. In mapping and design, this is just not acceptable. Studies which were on going at the NC State University Center for Technology and Integration sought to define specific characteristics of any and all of the combinations of possible buried utilities. From iron and plastics to fiber, the university was seeking to give manufacturers and utility owners a catalog of signal definition under various ground conditions through a variety of detecting devices. These characteristics would then be designed into a multiplatformed tool. Other universities as well got on the bandwagon to assist in this process. The cost grew for the research and development and with the current competition for service providers and the general downturn of the economy, companies failed to follow through with the research and development of the essential tools that address current day problems. While the Best Practice Study took a 25-year look into the future, technologically, the development seems to have come to a stand still. It seems to this writer, that the technological advances have taken a backseat and the shift for the industry has gone in the direction of Vac and S.U.E. Company services. The experts today have different faces from the experts of the past 20 years. The technology dreamed about in the Best Practice Studies simply are not being supported and advanced by government agencies, utility owners or private manufacturing. The cost of development is still likely too large for the return in integrating such new systems. I am left to wonder if the 'low bid mentality' of contract awards contributes to the lack of technological advances? Only time will tell. |
| Published Jan. 2002, NULCA President's Letter |
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