Real-time tracking for subsurface utility investigation

The increasing on the underground utilities are currently becoming crucial and significant for engineering works and land development. Nowadays, a grid concept is used to detect the subsurface utilities and this method is not efficient and time consuming for the large area. The objective of this study is to determine the real-time location of the subsurface utilities through the integration of Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR), Global Positioning System (GPS) and GIS. The GPS use to retrieve the location of the utilities obtained by the GPR and represented by x and y coordinates value. The GIS data model is mapped in the mobile device such as Personal Digital Assistant (PDA) as a base map of the study area. The results obtained are digital map of the subsurface utilities that integrated with PDA and the location of the utility is verified between the reading of the GPS and GIS base map. This study proposes the new approach technique that potentially to be used by government and private agencies that involves in underground utilities.