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There are around 4 million kilometres of underground pipes and cables in the UK, and 60,000 accidental strikes on these every year - costing the UK economy £2.4bn pa and putting workers’ safety and lives at risk.
Asset owners are legally required to make their data available to statutory undertakers and those with sufficient interest free of charge. However, obtaining it requires contacting multiple sources, with the data provided in different formats, scales and to varying timeframes. This process is time consuming for both asset owners, who are supplying the data, and for infrastructure project planners, who need access to the data. These inconsistencies also make it challenging for all relevant underground asset data to be reconciled into a single plan on asset locations, increasing the risk of accidents, project delays and disruption to businesses and residents.
NUAR is a government-led programme aimed at more efficient information exchange by creating a single, digital data-sharing platform on the location and condition of underground assets. It is a secure data-sharing service that provides an interactive, standardised digital view of the underground assets in a given location.
The first phase of NUAR (the minimum viable product) has been launched and is now live across England and Wales, with Northern Ireland expected to go live in Spring 2024. This includes data from all of the major energy and water companies in these areas, as well as numerous smaller providers of these services, telecommunications companies and public sector organisations.
The MVP is initially accessible to asset owners who operate in the live areas and have signed the NUAR Data Distribution Agreement (DDA) and agreed a Data Ingestion Specification (DIS). Once complete, NUAR will cover England, Northern Ireland and Wales.
If you are an underground asset owner (or working on behalf of one), that operates in England or Wales and is fully signed up to NUAR, you may now be able to access the service. Contact your organisation’s designated system admin for more details. If you do not know your designated system admin, please contact our Service Desk.
If your organisation is not fully signed up to NUAR yet, contact our onboarding team by completing our asset owner onboarding form.
If you are already using the NUAR service, or have fully signed up, but operate outside of our live areas (England and Wales), you can contact our Service Desk with any questions.