A decade-long project to digitize and database New York City’s sewer and water main maps has now come to a close. The digital maps are complete with detailed attribute data, including pipe size, the date built and repaired, and their composition. The data is now accessible to many more people than the previous archaic paper-based system, and can even be accessed from the field via the city’s wireless data network.

Baker Engineering won a $10.4 million contract to digitize the sewer maps back in 2002, and worked to form a seamless map layer that covers 6,000 miles of sewer and water network for the city. In the years since, that seamless layer has been added to with an estimated 10 million attribute values.

I recall discussion of underground mapping in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. I compiled a comprehensive overview of the mapping effort at Ground Zero for GeoWorld magazine, and published a paper by Wendy Dorf and colleagues regarding the Deep Infrastructure mapping effort. Unfortunately that paper is no longer part of GeoWorld’s online archive. This was pioneering work to pull together a data set for gas, electric and steam utilities at the Ground Zero site. I’m sure a large part of the impetus to comprehensively map the city’s complex underground infrastructure arose from this effort

See a feature in yesterday’s New York Times for more details on this mapping effort.

Read more related Spatial Sustain posts: