GIS-Based Monitoring of Urban Utility Excavations for Permit Compliance and Pavement Management in Smart Cities

Abstract

Real-time compliance monitoring of urban utility excavations remains challenging in digital construction, pavement management, and infrastructure governance. This study presents a pilot feld evaluation of a Geographic Information System–based Pavement and Infrastructure Monitoring System (GIS-PIMS) for permit verifcation, utility-proximity monitoring, and pavement management support. The framework integrates multi-sensor excavation-activity detection, GNSS-based equipment tracking, GIS-defned permit corridors, underground utility layers, and rule-based alarm logic. Field testing at three urban excavation sites used 30 paired observations comparing the tracking device with survey-grade RTK-GNSS reference measurements. The tracking unit showed a mean horizontal deviation of 6.82 m and an RMSE of 7.41 m. Under the tested 20 m-wide permit corridor, rule-based alarm classifcation achieved 96.7% accuracy. The fndings support pilot-scale feasibility for spatial compliance screening, precautionary near-utility warning, and pavement reinstatement planning. Larger datasets, diverse equipment and urban conditions, and longer-term evaluation of communication reliability are required before citywide deployment.