Intelligence in Subsurface Infrastructure

Reliable information about subsurface utilities, in conjunction with reliable, profession-established practices, are essential for planning and conducting subsurface construction operations. When information and practices are not reliable, the risk of damaging existing infrastructure drastically increases. Such errors are not only costly and time consuming; they pose a serious risk to public safety and operations crew personnel.

There is now an urgent need to bring researchers together from a range of disciplines to better understand how we can develop accurate models and images of the underground through detection and information technology, and how project conditions impact construction management and engineering tasks. Specifically, there exists a need to (a) comprehensively address health, safety, and risk in subsurface construction, (b) establish methodologies for studying myriad sophisticated practices of decision makers and crew in the field, and (c) develop next generation IT solutions for data analysis and decision support.

We are very pleased to form this workshop with a small group of carefully selected experts from a range of disciplines covering informatics, geophysics, construction management, urban planning. Each of us conducts work within construction and the underground realm, but each with a different perspective and specialty.

The primary target of the meeting is to:

• discover and build momentum for mutual research interests
• explore the opportunity to build a promising consortium towards submission of proposals to open EU-calls

In addition to building a consortium for longer term initiatives and funding proposals, we are planning two immediate next steps to the workshop.

Firstly, we plan to create a special issue for the International Journal of 3-D Information Modeling (IJ3DIM) and invite workshop participants to email us to indicate their interest before 7 December.

Call for IJ3DIM Special Issue on Underground Infrastructure Research

Secondly, we plan to run a session track on subsurface utilities in the upcoming Joint Geo Delft 2018 conference. We will discuss this further during the workshop.

The workshop will be held in the Carré building (room 2022) at the University of Twente in Enschede, Netherlands.

International guests arrive by plane from Amsterdam Schiphol Airport or Dusseldorf Airport (Germany). There are good train connections from Germany. An inter-city train brings you from the airports to Enschede within 1-2 hours. Check Amsterdam Schiphol Airport and Dusseldorf Airport for timetables. Once arrived at Enschede Centraal, bus 1 brings you to campus and bus 9 does so too in around 15min. These buses depart frequently.

There are various hotels close to our venue. We recommend three. One on campus, one on a walking distance, the other close to the central station:

If you want to stay on campus (on a walking distance from the workshop building), then we suggest you book a room in Drienerburght or de Broeierd.

If you prefer staying close to the central station and city center (15 minutes by bus from campus) we recommend the intercity hotel.

Participants, please prepare a 15-20 minute presentation about your prior research, ongoing work, and future ambitions with regards to underground infrastructure research.

After getting to know one another better, we plan to conclude the day by exchanging first ideas about forming consortia for larger research projects, and to apply for grants. If successful, we plan to organize a follow up meeting early 2018 in Denmark.