Hillside neighbourhood with mapped drainage lines in green

Surveys · Two local authorities

Drainage surveys: inlets, manholes and lines on the map

Urban drainage infrastructure mapped on the aerial photo for two authorities: inlets, manholes, drainage lines and inlet lines, with a city-wide survey map and a dashboard.

Hillside neighbourhood with mapped drainage lines

Client: Two local authorities
Field: Surveys
Source: Aerial photo

Urban drainage network: inlets, manholes and lines on the city map — Drainage network: inlets, manholes, lines

The challenge

Drainage information is often split between old drawings and the memory of operations staff. To plan cleaning before winter or deal with local flooding, you need to know where every inlet and manhole is and how they connect to the network.

Survey drawing opened in GIS: drainage, levels, plots

The solution

We mapped the drainage elements on the aerial photo and built separate GIS layers for inlets, drainage manholes, drainage lines and the inlet lines that connect them to the network. One authority received a drainage-survey dashboard that brings the data together; the other received a city-wide survey map with a legend.

Road cross-section survey: colour layers across a city — Road cross-section survey across a city

The outcome

Engineering and operations teams see the drainage network on the map, locate any inlet or manhole by position and plan maintenance from the layers instead of searching through drawings.