Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

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Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tust

Locational accuracy of underground utility mapping using ground penetrating radar

Siow Wei Jaw 1, Mazlan Hashim
Institute of Geospatial Science & Technology (INSTeG), Faculty of Geoinformation and Real Estate, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, 81310 UTM Johor Bahru, Malaysia

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 23 April 2012
Received in revised form 16 September
2012
Accepted 12 November 2012
Available online 3 January 2013
Keywords:
Underground utility mapping
Ground penetrating radar
Locational accuracy
Root mean square error
Scanning technique

a b s t r a c t
Many of todays underground utilities are reaching the end of their practical life and need to be replaced
or repaired. At the same time, new utility installations due to urban expansion and development of new
communication technologies such as broadband are in progress. Hence accurate information of these
utilities is essential for utility owners, engineers, contractors or surveyors, particularly as reference for
excavation. Ground penetrating radar has been widely used in extracting information of buried utilities
for better utility maintenance and management. The widely used scanning technique (i.e. perpendicularto-pipe scanning) is limited for retrieving the precise position of targets due to the effects of surrounding
media. This paper provides a solution for the prevention of failed excavations by means of precise underground utility mapping. This paper rst of all examines the accuracy of the commonly used data acquisition scanning technique, by conduction a series of tests, and then developed a better method.
Subsequently, a real-life experiment was carried out to validate the performance of the proposed new
scanning technique, to demonstrate its accuracy and effectiveness. We found that our method was able
to do along-pipe scanning with very high precision (i.e. less than +0.10 m, conforming to Quality Level A
utility data). Hence, the proposed method set as a new benchmark for using ground penetrating radar for
precisely locating buried utilities.
2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
The demand for basic utility services such as water, gas, electricity and communication are increasing dramatically in response
to rapid urban growth and development of new communication
technologies such as broadband. The urban underground of the
most densely populated modern cities (United States, United Kingdom, China, Japan and etc.) are characterized by many different
types of utility networks including electricity cables, gas pipelines,
bre optics, water and sanitary sewer pipelines and street lighting
circuits. This growing demand for utility services has resulted in
much construction of new utility installations, maintenance and
repair systems (Lester and Leonard, 2007).
Many of these utilities were placed under a street or footpath
many years ago, and often by different utility companies or organizations. Locational data on depth and even maps of where they are
laid are either sparse, unavailable or in best case unreliable.
Although today, as and when new cables/pipes are laid underground, precise 3-D maps are made, this has not been the usual
case. This situation has led to many cases of power interruptions,
broken cables and pipelines when one organization is digging to

Corresponding author. Tel.: +60 19 7173861; fax: +60 7 5566163.

E-mail
addresses:
mazlanhashim@utm.my,
(M. Hashim).
1
Tel.: +60 19 7173861; fax: +60 7 5566163.

profmhashim@gmail.com

0886-7798/$ - see front matter 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2012.11.007

lay new infrastructure, without knowing where other subsurface

cables and pipelines are located. This is not only inconvenient to
the urban dweller, in the form of interruptions in electricity, telephone, TV and water and gas supplies, but also causes dangerous
situations which have resulted in gas explosions and mortalities.
So, precise 3-D data must be available especially for maintenance,
repair and laying of new cables and pipelines. Without a well-organized underground spaces planning for supporting surface city life,
most of the modern cities will experience serious and unavoidable
problems with growing populations in the future (Aydin, 2008).
The conditions of underground utilities are difcult to assess
from the ground surface (Hao et al., 2012). At present there are
but few publications about the accuracy of underground utility
mapping. There are no specic procedures and approaches for
underground utility mapping in the form of standard guidelines
that are available to the telecom and other infrastructure industries involved. For this reason, the hit and miss principle is practiced widely by the stakeholders in current underground utility
mapping industries. Many failed excavation cases are reported
worldwide every year, where these have caused interruptions of
utility services supply, hazardous pipeline explosions and others
serious accidents (Costello et al., 2007; Lester and Leonard, 2007;
Metje et al., 2007; Rogers et al., 2012). In this sense, humans require a more detailed understanding regarding the shallow subsurface if they are to manage many of the Earths nite resources
(Neal, 2004). With this regards, comprehensive and accurate infor-

S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

mation of the shallow subsurface is much-needed by utility owners, contractors, engineers and even decision makers during the
excavation so as to avoid failed excavations during utility maintenance and rehabilitation. The non-destructive technology namely
ground penetrating radar (GPR) is therefore an important means
to extract the information of the shallow subsurface, particularly
for detecting and locating the buried utilities (Rubing, 2009).
GPR has been widely used in detecting and locating underground utilities due to its many advantages such as: fast data
acquisition, cost effectiveness for mapping large areas, better results compared to other non-destructive technologies and because
it provides high resolution imagery, for improved interpretation
(Lester and Leonard, 2007; Millington and Cassidy 2009; Rogers
et al., 2009; Enes et al., 2010; Jorge et al., 2010; Jeng et al., 2011).
According to Jeng et al. (2011) and Ni et al. (2010), GPR is widely
used for examining man-made structures to determine the position and depth of underground utilities. However, to date, no
investigations have been conducted to test the accuracy of underground utility mapping using GPR. This is one of the main reasons
for the increased cases of failed excavations, because the accuracy
of the underground utility mapping using GPR, has often been
overlooked by the utility owners or surveyors in a project. This
has stied efforts to develop new underground investigation technologies and the setting up of an underground 3-D cadastral system, due to a lack of understanding on current GPR systems, a
lack of a standard methodology for data collection and especially
a lack of reliable accuracy assessment (Daniels et al., 2008; Jol,
2009; Ariaratnam, 2010; Enes et al., 2010; Sey and Yaldiz, 2010).
Therefore, in order to reduce the number of failures in excavations of subsurface infrastructure, this paper focuses on the locational accuracy of mapping underground infrastructure using
GPR. The rst part of this paper studies the accuracy of three
pre-designed data acquisition scanning techniques (i.e. perpendicular-to-pipe, along-pipe and variation-angles scanning) that are
commonly used in the industry. In doing this, a dual frequency GPR
system was used to scan underground utilities under laboratory
conditions. These tests were specially set up to understand the role
of GPR in underground utility mapping, and evaluate the various

21

factors inuencing accuracy. Subsequently, the results of these

experiments were applied to a real world situation for verication
purposes. The last part of the paper describes the accuracy assessment carried out for the detection of underground utilities using
proposed GPR scanning technique.
2. The current status of underground utility mapping
2.1. Standard guidelines of underground utility mapping
In each typical underground utility mapping work, the operator
needs to comply with the guidelines provided by the authorities.
These guidelines mention the role and responsibility of the stakeholders in underground utility mapping, the quality level of the
utility data, utility map format and design, plus the development
of an underground utility database. Authorities such as the Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia (JUPEM) (2006), the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (2002), and the Mapping the
Underworld (MTU) organization are responsible for providing all
underground utility mapping related guidelines to the relevant
industries. According to these guidelines, there are four quality levels (A, B, C and D) of utility data which may be collected by different methods such as traditional drawing, on-site investigation or
survey and geophysics and trenchless technology (see Fig. 1). The
accuracy, reliability and cost of the utility data increase from Quality Level D to A where Quality Level A has the highest accuracy (i.e.
10 cm or better in both vertical and horizontal directions). A centralized underground utility database can be developed based on
these utility data of different quality levels. By having accurate
information of the underground utilities, it can avoid some of the
risks of catastrophic damage to underground utilities and adjacent
surface areas, as well as reduce the disruption of existing utility
services resulting from blind excavation work.
2.2. Underground utility mapping technologies
The public-owned urban underground areas: pedestrian path,
pavement path, cycle path and road form a complete spiders

Review of exisitng records & verbal recollection

Quality Level Analyse records for availablity of additional information
D

Surveying & Plotting visible above ground features

Quality Level Correlate relevant utility records to the surveyed features
C

Surface Geophysical technique to identify the existence and horizontal

position of the subsurface utilities
Quality Level Mark & indicate the location of the underground utilities on the ground
surface for subsequent survey
B

Non destructive excavation methods to determine precise horizontal and

vertical positions of subsurface utilities ( 10 cm)
Quality Level Survey and exposure of the underground utilities at each specific location
A

Fig. 1. Utility data quality level.

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S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

Fig. 2. Formation of hyperbola in GPR imaging.

web network of utility lines. As described by Hao et al. (2012) and

Rogers et al. (2012), the underground utilities network that serves
our cities are the most complex in the world, and yet they are
invisible from the ground surface. The tasks of locating and mapping the underground utilities are conducted by using different
types of trenchless technologies. These include: (i) visual technology (closed-circuit television); (ii) sewer scanner and evaluation
technology; (iii) pulsed technology (inductive line location, inductive line tracer, conductive line tracer and passive line tracer); (iv)
magnetic technology (magnetic locator and magnetometer); (v)
electromagnetic and radio frequency technology (ground penetrating radar, magnetic ux leakage, hydroscope and etc.); (vi) technology resistivity (resistivity locator) and (vii) acoustic technology
(acoustic pipe tracer, sonar and pipe cable locator) which are
widely used for locating these underground utilities without excavation (Cist and Schutz, 2001; Rogers et al., 2009; Ni et al., 2010;
Hao et al., 2012). Of all these technologies mentioned above, GPR
is the top choice technology for the subsurface investigation of
man-made structures (He and Hiroshi, 2007; Rogers et al., 2009;
Ni et al., 2010). For this reason, GPR was used in this study to acquire data of buried utilities in order to ascertain their accuracy
for 3-D mapping.
In the operation of a GPR system, the transmitter transmits high
peak voltage non-sinusoidal electromagnetic (EM) pulses to the
underground. When the signal hits a target, it will reect back to
the receiver antenna. These reected signals are known as a radar
trace. However, these reected signals always contain unwanted
echoes caused by heterogeneous media such as sand, clay, rock,
gravel and utilities. As such, these media appear as black and white
streaks in the radargram. For cylindrical targets such as pipelines
in underground utilities, they will appear in the form of black
and white streaks having the shape of a hyperbola in the radargram. Fig. 2, shows how the hyperbola is formed when the GPR
scans over a line (from Xa to Xb), by connecting the end points of
the lines (YJ, YK, and YJ) that are orthogonal to the antennas trajectory (XJ, XK, and XJ), with the antenna located at the position
of (x1, y1, z1) as it moves past this single scanline. The shortest line
(YK in Fig. 2) represents the depth of the target. For computing the
depth, Eq. (1) proposed by Gordon et al. (1998) and Motoyuki
(2009) is used:

Depth; D

mt
2

where D is depth; m represents velocity of the electromagnetic

wave; and t is the two-way travel time of the reection.

For understanding the position of the target from reected

pulses of the interfaces that recorded by the GPR system, the time
difference between the reected pulses (t1 or t2) are used in conjunction with the contrast in the dielectric properties of the surveyed layers. For computing the thickness of these layers, Eq. (2)
by Al-Qadi and Lahour (2005), Eq. (3) by Shihab and Al-Nuaimy
(2005) and Eq. (4) by Daniels et al. (2008) were used:

ct i
Thickness; di p
2 er;i
where

 c 2

er

represents the electric permittivity of the materials (er)

and

v q
e

eo

represents the electromagnetic wave travel velocity; di represents

layer thickness; ti represents two-way travel time of the reection;
c is the speed of light in free space (3  108 m/s); er,i represents
dielectric constant for each layer; em represents the materials
dielectric permittivity and eo represents the free space permittivity.
3. Materials and methods
3.1. Data acquisition
For conducting this study, IDS DetectorDuo2 GPR system was
used for data acquisition due to its optimal frequency (250 MHz
and 700 MHz) for locating the actual position of utilities through real
time interpretation and automatic calibration for different soil type
parameters (Ingegneria dei Sistemi S.p.A., 2007). This GPR system
was used to acquire data over two different test beds (i.e.
JUPEM_TestBed and UTM_TestBed) using three pre-designed scanning techniques, namely: (i) perpendicular-to-pipe scanning; (ii)
along-pipe scanning; and (iii) variation-angles scanning. These test
beds contain different types and sizes of utilities that are commonly
used in the utility industries. These test sites were specically built
to mimic the underground infrastructure in the real world, as well as
for calibrating the GPR system, and for understanding the capability
of GPR for underground utility mapping. For our experimental purposes, the utilities were buried at different depths as shown by the
arrangement depicted in Fig. 3a and b respectively.
2

Trademarks of Ingegneria dei Sistemi S.p.A.

S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

23

Fig. 3. Utility details of (a) JUPEM_TestBed and (b) UTM_TestBed.

3.2. Data pre-processing

The raw data acquired by the GPR system were pre-processed to
remove the unwanted echoes in order to produce a better focused
radargram before further interpretation. In this sense, the data
were initially aligned to the depth scale of the radargram according
to the actual measurement made from the ground surface. This is
because the recorded waveforms are always inuenced by the response from the surrounding medium and yet the mediums transition zone is separated from the real data, which causes

inaccuracies in the depth scale of the radargram. For this reason,

the start time of the transmitted signal is removed according to
the optimum velocity acquired from hyperbola tting and hence
the actual depth of the target is acquired. This produces a focused
image with a better signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). However, the
radargram still contains some unwanted echoes due to ringing
noise caused by non-target features such as rocks, cavities or soil.
By using the Clear-X ltering technique, we can suppress the unwanted background clutter (or noise) which obscured the reection of the actual target. According to Kim et al. (2007), the

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S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

Fig. 4. Scanlines for data acquisition at (a) JUPEM_TestBed and (b) UTM_TestBed.

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S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029
Table 1
Comparison of the pre-designed scanning techniques.
Experiment

JUPEM_TestBed
Perpendicular-to-pipe scanning
Along-pipe scanning
Variation-angles scanning
UTM_TestBed
Perpendicular-to-pipe scanning
Along-pipe scanning
Variation-angles scanning

Number of targets detected

RMSE values (m)

Penetration depth (m)

Planimetric (x, y)

Depth (z)

6/9
4/9
1/9

0.109
0.080
0.118

0.107
0.075
0.117

<1.90
<1.82
<1.15

5/5
4/5
3/5

0.112
0.086
0.113

0.109
0.070
0.115

<1.30
<1.15
<1.15

Clear-X lter is useful for removing unwanted continuous components along the X-axis because the noisy components regularly
happen in the horizontal and periodic direction. After the noisy
background clutters were removed, a bandpass lter was per-

formed to enhance the visual quality of the radargram. This image

enhancement of the radargram was made by using this clearing
lter, according to the region specied by the user, based on prior
knowledge of the target. The regions with frequency either lower

(a) Perpendicular to pipe scanning

(b) Along pipe scanning

(c) Variation angles scanning

*Note: grainy textures reflect to existence of high moisture contents due to shallow water
table (bottom part of radargram)
Fig. 5. Results of utility detection for the JUPEM_TestBed: (a) perpendicular to pipe scanning, (b) along pipe scanning, and (c) variation angles scanning.

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S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

(a) Perpe ndicular to pipe

i scanningg

(b) Along pipe scanningg

*Notee: grainy ttextures refflect to

existeence of highh moisture co
ontents
due too shallow w
water table (bbottom
part oof radargram
m)

(c) Varriation angles scanning

Fig. 6. Results of utility detection for the UTM_TestBed: (a) perpendicular to pipe scanning, (b) along pipe scanning, and (c) variation angles scanning.

or higher than the GPR signal bandwidth are hereby removed.

Lastly, the structure of the image was altered, based on the applied
gain function. Linear and smoothed gains were used in this study
based on a multiplication or mathematical operator dened by
the system itself. These pre-processing steps are based on the
authors personal experience. In fact, users can tailor their own
processing routines to suit their specic needs, using different
GPR systems, according to their own data interpretation
experience.

3.3. Feature detection

The real reections of the buried utilities were extracted from
the pre-processed radargram based on hyperbola reection. Then,
the position and depth of each target were retrieved for coordinate
transformation purposes. The actual underground position for each
target was computed by referring to the actual ground coordinate
obtained using a real time kinematic (RTK) and global positioning
system (GPS). After that, 10 sample points were collected from

S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

each detected utility based on based on the Nyquist sampling criteria to assess the accuracy as shown in Section 3.4 (Thomas and
Mike, 2009).
3.4. Accuracy assessment
In this study, the three criteria used for assessment were (i) root
mean square error (RMSE); (ii) target detectability; and (iii) penetration power. For the accuracy assessment, we computed the root
mean square error (RMSE) for both planimetric position and depth
observed by the GPR system. By calculating the RMSE for both planimetric position and depth, the achievable accuracy of the GPR
system for underground utility mapping is known. In this sense,
Eqs. (5) and (6) proposed by Gonalves et al. (2006) and Reyes
et al. (2010) were used for the RMSE for planimetric (RMSExy)
and depth (RMSEz), respectively:

RMSExy

RMSEz

r
XN 

1=N
rx2i ry2i
i1

r
XN

1=N
jZ o  Zj2
i1

where N represents the number of points observed; (rxi, ryi) is the

residual of a sample point; Zo is the observed depth and Z is the
computed depth. After computing the RMSE for each point, the differences between the variance of the observed and the computed
planimetric positions and depths were assessed using analysis of
variance (ANOVA). The reliability between the observed value from
GPS and computed value from GPR system was then tested.
Target detectability and penetration power were analyzed using
the three pre-designed data acquisition scanning techniques
namely: (i) perpendicular-to-pipe scanning; (ii) along-pipe scanning; and (iii) variation-angles scanning. For perpendicular-topipe scanning, the data were acquired in the direction perpendicular to the orientation of the buried utilities. While for the alongpipe scanning, the data were acquired in the direction parallel to
the orientation of the buried utilities, variation-angles scanning
was used to acquire data in the direction according to the angles
(30, 45, 60 and 90) to the orientation of the buried utilities.

The direction of scanning is shown in Fig. 4. In order to determine

the orientation of the buried utilities, a pipe cable locator was used.
Then, these data were pre-processed and the feature detection
steps as discussed in Sections 3.2 and 3.3 were carried out, prior
to the assessment.
Based on the detected utilities, we computed the overall accuracy for all the sample points (10 sample points selected from each
detected utility) collected from both test beds. According to the
RMSE results for both the JUPEM_TestBed and the UTM_TestBed,
the along-pipe scanning yielded the highest accuracy (i.e. lowest
RMSE) data in terms of both planimetric position and depth, as
compared to the other two techniques (see Table 1). The results
prove that data acquired using the along-pipe scanning technique
is the best, as its accuracy is equivalent to Quality Level A utility
data (i.e. accuracy better than 0.10 m for both planimetric position and depth). Based on the world standard guideline for utility
data quality level (see Fig. 1), any data acquired using non-destructive technology with accuracy better than 10 cm is categorized as
Quality Level A (American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),
2002; James, 2003; Department of Survey and Mapping Malaysia
(JUPEM), 2006).
Furthermore, we also found out that the along-pipe scanning
technique has the best target detectability as it detected the most
buried utilities in both test beds (see Figs. 5 and 6). In this sense,
the along-pipe scanning technique once again proved to be the
best data acquisition scanning technique, because of its good target
detectability. In addition, the along-pipe scanning technique also
has the best penetration depth capability, as shown in Table 1.
Nevertheless, the penetration depth for all three scanning techniques were basically limited to 2 m, caused by the existence of
the high moisture content of the medium, due to the shallow water
table in the area. The comparison of the three parameters for the
pre-designed scanning techniques is summarized in Table 1.

4. Discussions
The ndings regarding the detection accuracy of GPR using the
different data acquisition scanning techniques mentioned above
were re-conrmed by the analysis of variance (ANOVA). ANOVA

Presence of three different hyperbolic patterns in a GPR image

Gas pipe

27

Electrical cable

Water reticulation pipe

Fig. 7. Case study based on theoretical data using GprMax simulator.

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S.W. Jaw, M. Hashim / Tunnelling and Underground Space Technology 35 (2013) 2029

Fig. 8. Results of utility detection under real world conditions.

was conducted to determine the relationship between the variance

of these pre-designed scanning techniques in order to prove that
survey line orientation and location affects the accuracy of target
detection. The nding showed that there are signicant differences
(p = 0.002) for both planimetric position and depth among these
three scanning techniques. This conrms that different scanning
technique yields different data acquisition accuracy level. This
has been proven in the work of Jaw and Hashim (2011) and Jorge
et al. (2010), as they both emphasized that it is important to select
the most suitable scanning technique. Different scanning techniques come along with different surface antenna arrangements
which have the potential to improve underground images as
shown in these studies.
In order to improve our ability to understand the radars detection mechanism and obtain more information from GPR data, more
sophisticated data analysis tools were used. Hence, the assessment
of the accuracy of the scanning techniques was aided by numerical
experiments conducted on synthetic GPR images generated by
means of the electromagnetic simulator GprMax3 developed on
the basis of the Finite Difference Time Domain (FDTD) numerical
method (Giannopoulos, 2005). In order to study the limitations of
the perpendicular-to-pipe scanning technique, we have reported a
case where it was difcult to distinguish multiple utilities that are
buried closely together (see Fig. 7). The GPR image clearly depicts
the presence of three different hyperbolic patterns, which, however,
cannot be easily detected as the pattern associated with these three
adjacent buried objects is obscured by the patterns generated by
other neighbours. This suggests that the perpendicular-to-pipe scanning technique cannot effectively handle multiple objects that buried closely together.
By using these reliable ndings, we then carried out an experiment under real world conditions at Persiaran Kewajipan, Subang
Jaya, Selangor Darul Ehsan, Malaysia. In this experiment, we successfully detected almost all the buried utilities (6 out of 8) in these
areas using the along-pipe scanning data acquisition technique as
recommended above (see Fig. 8). These results were further veried by on-site trial hole investigations and using ancillary information such as the blueprint of the underground utilities
provided by the utility owners. In this actual real world experiment, the accuracy that we obtained was 0.098 m (x, y) and
0.095 m (z). As such, this research has proven that the suggested
scanning technique is good for practices in underground utility
mapping to obtain high accuracy utility data, which satises the
demanding requirement of the Quality Level A, as specied by
the American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE) (2002).

Created by Antonis Giannopoulos (Giannopoulos, 2005).

5. Conclusion
This research was carried out both in the laboratory, and in
some real world examples, to nd an optimum solution for precise
underground utility mapping. Through this study, the accuracy of
GPR for 3-D underground utility mapping has been presented,
and its accuracy is evaluated by use of RMSE and sample paired
t-test. We found that data acquisition using the along-pipe scanning technique yields good results for underground utility mapping. The data acquired using this technique provides 0.10 m
accuracy, which is equivalent to the Quality Level A utility data
as specied in the universal standard guidelines for underground
utility mapping. By applying good practice of data acquisition as
proposed in this study, it is useful and effective for collecting high
precision 3-D subsurface utility data. This is signicant in minimizing the risks of failed excavation. Therefore, this work has set a new
benchmark related to good practice of GPR data acquisition techniques for underground utility mapping industries. With continuous, rapid improvements in GPR hardware and software, we are
condent that the use of this method will increase greatly in the
near future.
Acknowledgments
This study was conducted as part of the E-Science Grant
Scheme, Ministry of Science, Technology & Innovation, Malaysia.
We are also thankful to the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia and
Department of Survey and Mapping, Malaysia for providing the
facilities for this investigation. Cooperations from RDG Supply
Sdn. Bhd. is also acknowledge.
Appendix A. Supplementary material
Supplementary data associated with this article can be found, in
the online version, at http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.tust.2012.11.007.
These data include Google map of the most important areas described in this article.
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