Under a street there are pipes and cables a city already depends on. Water is one of them. Part of that water is lost before the tap. To repair a pipe, someone has to open the street. Opening without knowing what is already there can hit another network. Opening the wrong length costs the same street twice.
I am not presenting a platform. I am looking to meet those who build this with the people who keep the network, and those who open the street — people of the same style, for whom the reading stays in the right hands.
Some discoveries
I have come across an approach that says which pipe is more likely to fail, and another that says which networks are already under the street before it is opened.
Baseform
In Lisbon, a team that came out of the national civil engineering laboratory. The water is already in the pipes. The maps, the work orders, the meters, the breaks of other years — already there. What they add is a reading of which length is more likely to fail, and where water is leaving without anyone having called.
What holds my attention is what this changes in the street. The crew does not open a length on a guess. The archive the utility already keeps says which street is next. The decision stays with those who answer for the network.
Sergio T. Coelho – Co-founder & CEO
Sogelink
In Lyon, an approach that started with a site manager. Before a street is opened, the law asks for a declaration: which networks are in the footprint — water, gas, power, telecom — and the plans that go with them. He was filling those forms by hand. The reading was put online, so the declaration reaches the operators who keep each network, and the answer comes back before the machine goes out.
What holds my attention is the moment. Not the works themselves. The moment before the street is opened. The pipe Baseform would point to is one of the networks this declaration is meant to name. The two readings do not do the same job. One says which length is worth opening. The other says what is already there when it is.
Antoine Dumurgier – CEO