Design
The Underground Movement to Map Subterranean Chicago
Cities often don’t know where all their pipes and cables are. This new digital platform could solve that.
Every 60 seconds, Americans strike an underground pipe, according to estimates. Careless homeowners and lazy utility workers are partly to blame, but so are outdated, inaccurate, or simply nonexistent records. Subsurface America is poorly mapped. Case in point: Downtown streets in Chicago were closed for an afternoon this summer after construction workers hit a gas line and caused an explosion. Crews thought the pipe was out of service, but it still contained gas.
No one was injured, but such errors can result in tragedy. Likewise, when water mains and emergency service lines are struck, residents suffer inconvenience or worse, while cities, utilities, and construction firms lose time and money—all for a lack of a good underground map.