In 2017, representatives of Gopher State One Call (GSOC) reached out to the leadership of Emergency Preparedness Committee of the Minnesota Geospatial Advisory Council (EPC) in hopes of learning what could potentially be done to improve the use of geospatial technology in the underground utility community. From ensuing discussions over the next three years, the Underground Utilities Mapping Project Team (UUMPT) came into existence under the auspices of the EPC in early 2020. Now comprised of over 25 individuals from various sectors of the underground Facility Operator (FO) community, since mid-2021 the UUMPT has been championing development of software called "FuzionView". In October 2022, a FuzionView prototype successfully demonstrated the ability to pull together an on-the-fly, web-mapped view, of all utility infrastructure within a designated dig area. This was a first in the nation achievement.

In 2023, GSOC hired Minnesota geospatial research and development nonprofit SharedGeo to develop a production version of FuzionView which will be used across Minnesota and released as Open Source software.  Together, these project partners, as well as others who are joining the effort, are working to leverage 50-years of advancements in geospatial technologies that have been previously under-utilized in the underground utility community.  This initial phase of the project development will culminte with the open source release of the FuzionView engine within the next year.

Project Team members represent a variety of industry stakeholders who are dedicated to increasing locate efforts. The project revolves around the notion that the technical aspects of sharing data for underground assets amongst the 811 call before you dig community shouldn't be a barrier to sharing. Join us to check up on the progress of the project and see where we're at with development. This Gopher One Call Sponsored project is enabling sharing of geographic data at the feature level between participating underground facility operators with 811 call ticket requests.