DIGITAL FUTURE FOR DETECTION

摘要

The advent of the long-desired "glass bottom boat" view of underground services is still some distance in the future. But all kinds of developments are heading that way. Nowadays these fall under the more current terminology of Building Information Modelling or BIM, the production of the 3D, information rich computer models which are increasingly used for building and civil engineering design and construction. Their use will soon be mandatory at least for government work in countries like Scandinavia and the UK. Alongside this are leaps and jumps in other computer systems, where continually increasing computer power, 24 hour connections to the Internet, big data systems, virtual reality and augmented reality glasses are all combining. Transparent images of a design overlaid on the view, via headset screen, or notated and labelled views of the real world changing as iPads or smartphone handsets move were recently displayed by infrastructure software company Bentley Systems for example at its annual conference. Still in development and slightly aided by laboratory conditions as they were, they indicated that such "Hollywood" notions are getting closer.