811 Day was created to bring attention to a significant but unfamiliar issue – the high cost and safety impacts of underground utility strikes.

Quantifying the cost and safety impacts of utility strikes is difficult. A compilation of various studies estimates that the direct cost of each strike is $4,000 -- but that doesn’t take into consideration the cost to repair and restore the damage. Taken together, the cost of the strike plus the cost of restoration, the total is 29 times the cost of the direct damage itself [1]. Because utility strikes are often not reported, the frequency of occurrence is merely an estimate. With more than 20 million miles of buried pipelines, cables, wires and other facilities, the Common Ground Alliance (CGA) estimates that there are at least 400,000 utility strikes per year in the United States. In 2021, the cost of utility strikes to the US economy was estimated to be more than $30 billion.

Utility strikes have been a problem for a long time – ever since the 1850s when the first underground sewer systems were built in Chicago and Brooklyn.

Act of Congress

It wasn’t until 1994 that the government got involved. At that time, Congress required each state to develop a One-Call system with a centralized number to call in advance of digging. The goal of the one-call system is simplicity. Any person or company planning to excavate can call an in-state number and the utility companies would be notified to send a Utility Locator to find and mark utilities using spray paint and/or flags. Unfortunately, the number of One-Call Centers quickly grew to 71, each with its own 10-digit phone number, making it confusing and taxing to notify the right people before breaking ground.

In response, in 1995, the FCC designated 811 as the nationwide number to call (or click) to protect pipelines and other utilities from excavation damage.

Today, 811 is contacted nearly 40 million times annually [2].

Despite the fact that use of 811 one-call centers rose by eight percent from 2020 to 2021, “No notification made to 811 center” remains the top root cause of utility strikes with over a quarter of all damages still attributed to no notification)[3].

Much more to be done

Although it’s simpler than ever to call for utility location, utility strikes remain a major drag on the American economy. Fortunately, emerging technology is being used to produce precise maps of underground utilities that speed the process of identifying and locating underground utilities.

For example, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), are being used by growing numbers of utilities, municipalities and excavators to create and share data about underground utilities. Unfortunately, having an accurate map of all utilities in a given area is rare, because not every contractor or owner working on a job site uses GIS to map utilities. That’s when another technology, Radio Frequency Identification (RFID), can make all the difference. Magnetic RFID tags can be buried with any type of utility and will display its identity, owner and other information with a simple scan. This data can be incorporated into GIS (such as Esri’s ArcGIS) through data collection apps on mobile devices. RFID is agnostic, so it will work with any utility, above or below ground.

RFID and GIS are key

Passive RFID tags don’t require power (they activate only when scanned) so they can last underground for years. A recently released study describes how RFID has been used to mark and manage utilities over a period of seven years. The study concluded that magnetic RFID marking, coupled with GIS mapping, is a low-cost, reliable solution for underground infrastructure locating and management.

Marking underground utilities with magnetic RFID is a long-term solution that streamlines future utility locating processes while providing the means to connect to digital mapping systems for efficient utility management -- from water pipes to fiber-optic cables. Utility location verified by RFID, provides a highly accurate method for utility owners to manage all of their infrastructure facilities.

Today, on 8/11 calling 811 remains essential part any excavation, from individuals working in their backyards to construction companies about to break ground on a new project.

References:

[1] https://geospatial.blogs.com/geospatial/2020/04/cost-of-underground-utility-damage-represents-a-major-drag-on-national-economies.html

[2] https://dirt.commongroundalliance.com/2021-DIRT-Report/Data-Overview-Spotlight-on-2021/811-Center-Data-2021

[3] https://dirt.commongroundalliance.com/2021-DIRT-Report/Executive-Summary#mainContentAnchor

Sources:

https://www.4manalytics.com/blog/29-1-the-cost-of-striking

https://www.aii.org/811-day-highlights-the-importance-of-safe-digging/#:~:text=811%20Day%20is%20a%20nationwide,of%20digging%20in%20that%20state.

https://web.archive.org/web/20111021063312/http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-257293A1.pdf

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_location#:~:text=Public%20utility%20systems%20are%20often,(32%2C000%2C000%20km)%20in%20total.

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