Underground scanner on faults in pipes

There are a number of utility lines- water, storm water drains, sewerage which were laid during the British rule. Also there are cable lines of service providers. However, detection of the crumbling old pipelines becomes difficult due to heavy traffic and layers of Cement Concrete or asphalt. With the help of a GPR, leakages can be identified by just moving the machine on the surface.

Additional Municipal Commissioner, Projects, Anil Diggikar said the civic administration is in discussion with a few companies. He said, 8220;We will be given a demonstration in a few days which will enable us to know how efficient the GPRs are in locating leakages.8221; If the use of the machines is feasible, BMC will take the opinion of experts and IIT- Bombay, after which tenders will be invited. If approved, then BMC may purchase around six GPR machines to be used in six zones across the city at a cost of around Rs 60 lakh each. GPR uses radar pulses to image the subsurface through electromagnetic radiation in the microwave band UHF/VHF frequencies of the radio spectrum, and detects the reflected signals from subsurface structures.

Municipal Commissioner, Jairaj Phatak said that since the island city8212;Colaba to Mahim8212; was made by reclaiming land and has utilities from the British era, the incidents of leakages are high there. 8220;This problem is not as much in western and eastern suburbs as the utilities are newly laid,8221; he said.

There is around 2000-2,500 km of underground water pipeline network in the island city, which was laid in the British era. Officials from the water department said it becomes difficult to verify which underground utility has a problem. 8220;GPR gives a radar-gram as its result in which the underground utilities conditions are depicted and leakages are identified,8221; said Deputy Municipal Commissioner Water supply, Pramod Charankar.

He also pointed out that GPR will only be able to provide a rough indication.

8220;The GPR data will have to be correlated. The machine will only gives us radar-grams of all utilities but which utility actually has leakages will still have to be determined,8221; he added.