Digital transformation is a critical reality for the infrastructure industry and with this realization permeating, we are witnessing industry embrace geospatial technologies for end-to-end integration of processes across the value chain.
Background
The infrastructure sector has been a major focus area for the Government of India in recent decades. A sum of $1.4 trillion (over ₹1 lakh crore) is planned to be invested on infrastructure in the period between 2019 and 2023 to actualize sustainable economic development in the country. Globally, economic growth relies heavily on contextualized and reliable infrastructure which connects the dots between the production, supply, and consumer ecosystems. Contextualized infrastructure is not only important for economic growth but also promotes inclusiveness.
Lack of contextualized infrastructure not only impedes economic development, but also imposes additional costs in terms of time and money. According to a report by the Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation (MoSPI) on central sector projects for July–September 2021, out of 1,873 projects (with an anticipated cost of about ₹2,798 crores or $373 million), 507 projects had significant time overruns, in some cases as high as 324 months. That is more than 25 years.
Covering projects with an outlay of over ₹150 crores (over $20 million), the report highlights that cost overruns for the delayed projects are 59.1% of their sanctioned amount. As one of the fastest growing economies, where the infrastructure sector is a key driver, these overruns bear serious implications on overall economic development while denting the fiscal health of the country directly.
Challenges
Even as infrastructure projects grow more complex by the day and the demand on resources becomes more exigent, the ‘science of where’ and contextualized information demystify the complexities associated with developing and maintaining infrastructure. Reasons cited for overruns in the MoSPI report include, among others:
- Geographic surprises
- Geologic surprises
- Design changes
- Environment, forest, and wildlife clearances
- Crossing of pipelines/transmission lines
- Right of way
- Interference of utilities
- Land related issues, and
- Power and water availability
A separate study conducted by the Project Management Institute (PMI) and KPMG (supported by MoSPI) on infrastructure projects in India, found that multiple factors contribute to the reported overruns. These are mainly: lack of comprehensive upfront planning and risk management, non-collaboration across stakeholders, uncertainties in land acquisition process and regulatory approvals, scarcity of skilled labor, and above all, lower maturity of project management processes to adequately plan for such factors. It is no secret that the context of location and its interdependencies form the core of these reasons, and if they are contextualized in the early stages of a project, most of the above-mentioned issues can be avoided.
Geospatial technology and its applications
The significance of geospatial technology, its role in unknotting complex problems, as well as its contribution towards improving design, planning, and quality of infrastructure projects while reducing costs is well known. No further emphasis is required in that regard. With capabilities to address infrastructure projects across their lifecycle — namely planning, design, construction, operations, and maintenance — the infrastructure sector’s contribution to the overall geospatial economy in the country is 22% (Indian Geospatial Economy Report, 2018). Geospatial technologies that add value to the project life cycle predominantly comprise of GNSS and positioning technologies, but also others, such as GIS and analytics, Earth Observation, and LiDAR scanning.
With such a huge potential to offer, geo-enabled infrastructure models are bringing about a paradigm shift in planning, development, management, and maintenance of infrastructure, along with significant productivity benefits while minimizing cost and time overruns at the same time. Geo-enabled Building Information Management (GeoBIM) supported by 3D laser scanning, terrestrial photogrammetry, drone surveys, Augmented Reality (AR) and Internet of Things (IoT) are aiding in contextualizing infrastructure projects to real world scenarios, improving accuracies, and minimizing discrepancies and misses.
By fostering data driven approaches, geo-enabled digital infrastructure is helping stakeholders unlock efficient methods of designing, planning, construction, operations, and maintenance of infrastructure assets. Given the involvement of multiple stakeholders in infrastructure projects, GeoBIM workflows aid in pinpointing exact locations along with their dependencies, thus helping project stakeholders visualize the ground in rich detail and identify risks ahead of time. By providing access to data and insights through geo-enabled portals and hubs in a Cloud environment, project coordination between stakeholders becomes more efficient and error-free, while improving effectiveness and productivity of resources (both physical and human).
Geospatial value impact
While delivering high performing assets, GeoBIM workflows create a significantly positive value impact on the infrastructure economy. A report — The Economic Value of GPS: Preliminary Assessment — presented at the National Space-Based Positioning, Navigation and Timing Advisory Board Meeting, 2015 concluded that GNSS and positioning technologies alone benefited the U.S. to the tune of 18-22% in improving productivity, 15% in increasing resource/asset utilization, 20% in reducing payroll, while significantly causing an increase in fuel savings and reducing carbon footprint.
The economic advantages derived from GNSS and positioning technologies, when clubbed with the offerings of GIS (Geographic Information System) and other geospatial analytics Earth Observation and scanning technologies, embody significant efficacy for the infrastructure economy. Quantifying the extent of intangible benefits of geospatial technologies — including the factors for the time overrun referred to above — have always been tricky and very often go unnoticed.
A conservative estimate of the Geospatial Value Impact (GVI) on the Indian infrastructure sector is provided below:
With increase in competitiveness, the need for geo-enabled digital transformation across the value chain in the infrastructure sector has grown multifold. Given that the infrastructure sector is dominated by small players and is highly fragmented, the overall uptake of geospatial technologies in India is relatively low. Digital transformation is a critical reality for the infrastructure industry and with this realization permeating, we are witnessing industry embrace geospatial technologies for end-to-end integration of processes across the value chain. These efforts are expected to further amplify the above benefits.
1 Considering a conservative 20% improvement in overall efficiencies benchmarked against the cost overruns reported by MoSPI.
2 Assuming that this infrastructure can be best utilized by 20% of the population and consumer benefits using maps and location intelligent applications are valued at ₹500 per user per month.
3 Based on the assumption that the current cost of environmental degradation in India is pegged at ₹3.75 trillion, or $50.4 billion, and proper planning can reduce the degradation at least by 2% per annum.
4 In addition, if we look at the employment elasticity for every 10% cost savings, an estimated 4.5% new jobs are expected to be created; Infrastructure Priorities for Job Creation in India, IDC Institute, 2019; based on the total number of projects and companies associated with infrastructure sector.
