Construction and excavation activity that damages buried infrastructure in the United States is on the rise. For over 10 years, damage numbers have risen – now exceeding 500,000 annual incidents of striking pipelines, cables, and wires below the surface. It is estimated that this leads to economic harm of over…
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Washington, D.C. (March 1, 2023) — The Alliance for Innovation and Infrastructure (Aii) today is launching its third annual Modern Roots March educational campaign to build up America’s infrastructure IQ and explain the importance of the relatively obscure issue of damage prevention. The campaign features original educational content and encourages the…
Do you know what is below? After a month of emphasizing modern roots, it is time to move into national safe digging month! Throughout March, Aii has been educating on the importance of building intuition about what is below your feet every day. While no one has X-ray vision, everyone…
Across the U.S., underground utilities occupy space at different depths. Many factors influence the depth you may find these pipes, cables, and wires, such as the local landscape, population density, and importantly, the regional climate. Due to regional climate variations within the U.S., these modern roots must be protected from…
In any natural landscape, a wide variety of vegetation have different root networks belowground. The same is true for the Modern Roots that deliver water, Internet, and much more to all different types of structures. The utilities that run beneath our feet are buried at different depths depending on a…
Are you planning to dig a hole? Maybe you’re just planting a small tree, installing a mailbox, or leveling out a wonky slope in your yard – but there may be something important underground that you can hit! Picture that you are standing below ground with your eyes at surface…
If you have been following the Aii educational series Modern Roots March this month, you’ll know that we want to get you thinking about underground utilities like you think about the roots of plants and trees. The reason is simple: if you start to recognize that modern life is supported…
Everyone knows you wouldn’t dig right next to the base of a tree if you thought there were roots underfoot. The same intuition should govern your decisions wherever you are because modern life is so interconnected that utilities, pipes, and wires run under your feet almost anywhere you are! That…
Beneath our households, sidewalks, and backyards, a hidden network of utilities enables a multitude of services to be delivered to consumers, like roots to a tree. Across the U.S., there are more than 20 million miles of underground utility infrastructure. These range from municipal sewer lines to privately-owned telecommunications lines…
A single call to 811 for an excavation project sets in motion a process that will reveal modern roots in a dig site. Damage prevention is a collaboration of different stakeholders who pass information on down the line until each party has completed their task and the site is ready…
Building anything, from a suburban family home to a 50-story skyscraper in a downtown business district, requires preparing the building site. A crucial part of the preparation begins before any machinery makes contact with the Earth: locating underground utilities at the construction site. Pipelines, cables, wires, and other utilities can…
Throughout your daily routine – whether it’s your commute to work, grocery shopping, or visiting grandma – your life is dependent on crucial pieces of infrastructure you may not even notice. The foundation of our ability to enjoy electricity, running water, and home heating rests on millions of miles of…
The ground we walk on is covered with asphalt for roads, concrete for sidewalks, and is naturally decorated with grass, flowers, shrubs, and trees. Intermingled within are telephone polls, electricity wires, buildings, and other structures requiring power. We all understand that natural organisms have roots that ground them…
