Chapter 7: Case studies: Digital twins of subterranean assets

Our dear friend and co-author Geoff Zeiss passed away before the publication of this chapter to which he contributed hugely. We would like to dedicate this work to the memory of Geoff.

Holger Kessler and Neil Brammall

In 2018 the UK Government established the Geospatial Commission, an independent, expert committee responsible for setting the UK’s geospatial strategy and coordinating public sector geospatial activity. Its aim is to unlock the significant economic, social and environmental opportunities offered by location data and boost the UK’s global geospatial expertise. Many challenges to sharing data exist, ranging from commercial and legal issues to data quality and privacy issues. This chapter reports on how these challenges are envisaged to be overcome in the National Underground Asset Register (NUAR) Project (GOV.UK, 2020) and what the benefits of secure data sharing are both to users and organisations as well as the overall economy.