DIGGS Does Pipelines

Data interchange for geotechnical and geoenvironmental specialists (DIGGS) is a data transfer standard for the geotechnical and geoenvironmental communities. Originally developed for the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to efficiently capture data related to geotechnical boring logs, cone penetration test (CPT) soundings, and lab testing results, the data transfer protocol is gaining traction and is now beneficially impacting other areas where disparate parties (i.e., consultants, contractors, vendors, etc.) routinely publish/submit data to owners as part of project deliverables. The authors believe that these data and the transfer protocol are also relevant for the pipeline community, as this community has a need for information (and information exchange) regarding condition assessments, environmental compliance, geohazards, and other information that may impact pipeline operations. By adopting DIGGS, users need not modify how they currently capture data, but rather will use DIGGS as a vehicle to transfer their collected data to other applications where it can be shared, stored, visualized, and managed. This paper will describe DIGGS and then demonstrate how DIGGS can be used to capture the diverse information/data) that are valuable to the pipeline community.