National Buried Infrastructure Facility (NBIF)—New Opportunities for Controlled Testing

The subsurface space is complex—it contains a myriad of buried assets (e.g. pipes and cables) and transport infrastructure (e.g. tunnels) which form the backbone of our modern society. The ground provides the support both for the surface infrastructure as well as the subsurface infrastructure—indeed, it is an asset in its own right. However, it can vary both spatially and temporarily making the subsurface system complex. At the same time, the underground space is a huge resource which can be used in variety of different ways, e.g. housing of hard infrastructure to free up surface infrastructure, provide a renewable source energy as well as furnish water storage and supply. New technologies and construction methods are constantly developed to operate in, see through or construct within the subsurface. Objectively evaluating these new approaches can often be challenging as access to field trials can be complicated and these often lack the required control and knowledge of the ground truth. The newly opened National Buried Infrastructure Facility (NBIF, www.birmingham.ac.uk/nbif ) situated at the University of Birmingham, the UK, enables full-scale or nearly full-scale controlled testing.