Mapping for Horizontal Infrastructure

Horizontal infrastructure is the backbone of urban and rural development, enabling the movement of people and goods, access to essential services, and the functioning of economies. Its planning, construction, and maintenance are crucial for ensuring the smooth operation, safety, and sustainability of a region, and it plays a fundamental role in supporting the quality of life and economic growth for the populations it serves. Mapping, planning and inspecting horizontal infrastructure requires a suite of specialized tools and techniques, and has been an area of technological development in recent years. In this session, case studies on horizontal infrastructure – from tunnels to sidewalks and intersections – will illuminate best practices and lessons learned for horizontal infrastructure. 

Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel – 3D Digital Twin and Right of Way Survey
The Downtown Seattle Transit Tunnel is a 1.3-mile-long twin bore tunnel in Seattle, Washington with four stations. It was originally used by buses and is being converted to train use.   In assuming ownership of the facilities, Sound Transit needed to understand and document the ownership rights, analyze gaps in the ownership, and prepare for numerous improvements that would be needed to accommodate trains, improve public access, safety, and modernization.

This presentation will discuss how DEA helped Sound Transit with the conversion by retracing the right-of-way and easements; completing an existing conditions survey; developing a BIM; and developing a 360° digital photo map.  DEA completed the survey using 3D laser scanning to gather highly accurate and detailed point cloud (LiDAR) data throughout the entire facility. The laser scans were modeled using Revit to create a highly detailed and accurate existing conditions digital twin model.

Sound Transit’s goals were to facilitate ownership transfer and provide an existing conditions BIM that could be used as the basis of design for numerous improvements required to convert from buses to trains. This was successfully accomplished by DEA, and Sound Transit is creating workflows tied to the model for ongoing design, maintenance, asset management and construction projects.  It is also being used for security analysis and way finding configuration studies.  

Winner of ACEC Washington State Gold and National Recognition Awards.

Brandon Harr, David Evans and Associates, Inc. and Justin Lopez, Sound Transit

Avoiding the Distress of Sidewalks Assessments
WGI is addressing ADA compliance and maintenance concerns in counties across Florida with a tailored made solution for sidewalk inventory. WGI can collect 30+ miles of sidewalks daily and with the abundance of data collected and processed, the county is able to take decisive action on what sidewalk segments take priority for maintenance or full reconstruction. The solution discussed provides results that are repeatable and accessible over time and ensures accuracy of the data through its multiple sensors on the sidewalk patroller.

Seth Adams, WGI, Inc.

An Alternative Approach to Resurfacing Projects – A Case Study on Mimicking Mobile Data
GPI Geospatial was tasked with a project to provide detailed roadway mapping deliverables for an upcoming resurfacing project of SR 8A (I-110) in Escambia County, FL. GPI Geospatial has typically utilized mobile mapping for these projects but instead developed a strategic methodology of acquiring high-density aerial lidar, combined with survey control and check shots, to create a dataset that could support feature extraction in a mobile mapping environment. This unique approach allowed GPI’s team to reduce office and field costs while increasing the project’s efficiency and overall schedule. This presentation will review GPI Geospatial’s data collection and feature extraction methods, as well as an in-depth look at conventional surveying cross-sections to verify that accuracies and standards were met.

Angela Bailey, GPI Geospatial, Inc.

Access to All – Leveraging Field and Cloud-Based Mapping Technology
The City of Killeen, TX is currently under lawsuit by the Department of Justice (DOJ) to provide equal access to its programs, services, and facilities to individuals with disabilities, including veterans.  The City engaged STV to perform a comprehensive review of the City’s facilities and services and create a Self-Evaluation and Transition Plan.   Our team is completing a Public Right-of-Way Accessibility Guideline analysis based on 2010 standards.  The goal of the project is to analyze and report the deficiencies an individual may encounter while traveling across the city’s 800+ miles of streets.  The analysis reviews sidewalks, curb ramps, pedestrian signals/controls, crosswalks, bus-stops, and shared-use paths for vision-impaired or wheelchair bound persons utilizing a custom field data collection application, a sidewalk profiling vehicle, cloud-based mapping, and data storage for near real-time visualization and time savings.  The project deliverable is an Opinions of Probable Construction Cost relational data table that details the problem, identifies the solution, and provides a preliminary cost-estimate for the repairs necessary to become compliant with current ADA standards.  Our presentation will showcase the methods and technology used for project delivery.  The audience will leave with a general knowledge of the barriers to accessibility, what the DOJ is looking for in a plan to achieve compliance, and how our project team is assisting the City of Killeen.

Chad Hall, STV Infrastructure, Inc.

Lock And Dam Bulkhead Recess Rehabilitation Survey Utilizing Aerial Mapping, Terrestrial Scanning, Combined with Multibeam And Side Scan Sonar Data.
This presentation will discuss the methodologies for utilizing several survey technologies to develop a high-resolution and accurate 3D representation of an existing lock and dam in support of the rehabilitation design.  The digital twin of the lock includes the downstream wall details (showing areas of distress), any bulkhead recesses, cofferdam V-notches, and the operations building and surrounding areas.

A mixture of technology was used to capture below and above water details within the lock, details of the dam monoliths including location of joints, recess slots, electrical pull boxes, counter-weight wells, stairs and the lock house.  

Traditional survey techniques were used to tie control for each of the remote sensing technologies ensuring a seamless 3D model of the site. A web-based “walk-through” tool was generated to provide the engineering team with a virtual environment and working digital twin of the site.

Matt LaLuzerne, McKim & Creed, Inc.

Land Surveyors Leverage Reality Modeling to Survey Bridge
Located in l’Isle d’Abeau, France, this bridge over the Canal de la Bourbe presents worrying signs of aging. It hasn’t been regularly surveyed since the 90’s. Setis, French land-surveying company, was assigned by the asset owner (governmental entity) to drive this work. The project aims at creating a digital twin of the bridge to extract CAD-ready deliverables assessing the current bridge’s condition. These observations will in-the-end possibly drive to repairing works, ensuring the bridge’s safety for all users. It has been decided to proceed with drone capture and reality mesh processing.

This presentation will describe the benefits of this method:

– Increased safety during data acquisition: the road remains open, and land-surveyors stand far from traffic during entire session making capture safer and more comfortable.

– Processing time-saves

– Easy extraction of relevant information from images and reality mesh

– Intelligible deliverable to project stakeholder

Arnaud Durante, Bentley Systems