Underground utilities out of GIS-based digital map

The city’s century-old water network will not be mapped, with the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) deciding to leave out underground utilities as it prepares to undertake a project for a GIS-based digital map of the city’s properties.

The absence of a complex underground utility network had often resulted in workers damaging pipelines while digging roads. The city has had 51 pipe ruptures in the last four years, six of them in the last two weeks, resulting in the wastage of millions of litres of water.

The BMC is in the process of preparing a GIS-based digital map for future development projects, marking each surface civic structure from a manhole to a building. But a high price quoted for the mapping of the city’s 40 lakh properties has resulted in the BMC dropping underground mapping.

“If we are to map over and underground amenities as earlier planned, the price will be not less than Rs 240 crore and we have a budget of only Rs 32 crore,” said a civic official. “We will conduct the underground survey of pipelines in later stages.”