Augmented Reality (AR) for urban utility infrastructure: A UK perspective

Research on Augmented Reality (AR) in the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industry is still new. As part of a comprehensive study on the application of AR technologies for urban utility infrastructure, this paper sets out to contribute to the state-of-the-art in this area by presenting the results of an industry survey in the UK. The results of the survey conformed, in principles, to majority of findings of the previous research in the field, but also revealed some new or contradictory patterns. Geo-locationing and geo-tagging are still major concerns and have not yet been completely resolved. Relying on global systems does not look like the most reliable option and local systems are required to either replace or jointly work with global systems. With respect to non-AR issues, it is crucial that the quality and content of infrastructure and utilities data are improved and ideally stored centrally in a nationally-procured database.