The board of Ordnance Survey (OS), Britain’s national mapping service, has agreed to operate the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) as part of its public task and on a cost recovery basis.
Over the coming months, services will begin transitioning from AtkinsRéalis, which collaborated with the Geospatial Commission to develop NUAR, to OS.
The Geospatial Commission will retain long-term policy and performance oversight of the service.
NUAR is an emerging digital service that provides instant access to a map of underground assets – including pipes and cables – across England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Scotland has its own service, the Scottish Community Apparatus Data Vault.
There are estimated to be four million kilometres of buried utility pipes and cables in the UK, including telecoms, internet, gas, water and electricity. Every year there are estimated to be 60,000 utility strikes, endangering the lives of those digging, delaying construction, disrupting traffic and causing interruption to essential service.
The economic cost to the UK of the disruption caused by utility strikes has been estimated to be £2.4bn a year.
Currently streetwork contractors must contact multiple organisations and wait on average more than six days just to get the information they need about buried assets that they need to avoid damaging. With NUAR, they can get that information instantly, at any time.
Guy Ledger, AtkinsRéalis project director for NUAR, said: “Having successfully built a viable working platform, this is a really exciting moment as NUAR transitions to a public beta service giving planners and excavators standardised, secure, instant access to the data they need to carry out work effectively and safely.”
Baroness Jones of Whitchurch, junior minister at the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology said: “We are committed to unlocking the power of data to reduce disruptions to the public and help deliver economic growth across the UK. From spring, NUAR will minimise the chance of accidental damage to the pipes and cables beneath our feet, protecting the supply of gas, water and electricity to our homes and businesses.
“By harnessing the Ordnance Survey’s centuries of expertise in managing critical national geographic data, we will ensure this service can deliver for the public and industry from Newcastle to Newport and Brighton to Belfast.”
Ordnance Survey chief executive Nick Bolton said: “We are excited to apply our expertise in mapping Great Britain above ground, to the infrastructure below it. This innovative digital map shows how collaboration, between private sector and government, can bring huge economic benefit to the nation. Being trusted to operate a critical national asset, such as NUAR, is recognition of our enduring capabilities and we are delighted to be responsible for running this service.”
Northumbrian Water Group chief executive Heidi Mottram added: “Ever since we collaborated with Ordnance Survey and others to design and produce the forerunner of NUAR at Northumbrian Water Group’s Innovation Festival in 2018, we have always felt this system, which benefits utilities and customers alike, should be hosted and managed not-for-profit in the public sector. Our planning and operation teams have fully embraced NUAR and this move to our national mapping agency is welcomed.”
