Augmented Reality Geovisualisation for Underground Utilities

Prior to an excavation for a construction project, fieldwork is necessary to identify the location of all underground utilities. There is a demand for identifying the accurate positioning of the underground utilities, in order to support the contractors in avoiding damages to existing underground infrastructures. Such damages could cost thousands of euros, needless to underline the danger in human lives, in the presence of gas and electricity. There is a concrete market request for solutions that are able to effectively handle underground utilities’ data and function in support to the fieldwork. The fusion of technologies such as global navigation satellite systems (GNSS), sensors, geographic information systems (GIS) and geodatabases, augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) can lead to products and services for monitoring, documenting and managing the utility-based geospatial data. The LARA project, a H2020 co-funded project by the European Commission (EC), embraced these needs and developed a software and hardware (S/H) system. The LARA hand-held and mobile device involves state-of-the-art technologies in the domain of positioning and sensors, AR and 3D GIS geodatabases and aids the users in “seeing” beneath the ground by rendering the complexity of the 3D utilities’ models. The visualization of underground utilities is made using a mixed reality paradigm, where the user can see at the same time the surroundings and the utilities rendered at their exact location in 3D. In order to cope with the end-users expectations, two types of visualizations have been implemented and tested. LARA system tested in two case studies during the project lifetime and the results are promising.