Basic Subsurface Registration (BRO) in practice

It is a real gamechanger for the geotechnical market, according to Kees-Jan van der Made, president of the Association of Entrepreneurs in Technical Soil Research (VOTB). "The BRO offers all parties involved, including the BV Nederland that has invested tax money in this, the opportunity to benefit from the central and standardized database."

"The BRO stipulates, among other things, that administrative bodies have a legal duty to provide, use and improve subsurface data," Van der Made explains. "Since its inception in 2015, the Subsurface Basic Registration for geotechnical data has been gradually expanded.

• Jan. 1, 2018 Geotechnical soundings and groundwater monitoring wells;
• January 1, 2020 Geotechnical drill sample descriptions and drill sample analysis-1;
• January 1, 2021 Groundwater monitoring network and groundwater level survey;
• July 1, 2021 Geotechnical drilling sample analysis-2;

All of this geotechnical data is available to anyone digitally in well-documented XML formats, and the BRO is being populated at an increasing rate by its data suppliers, including the soil survey companies.

Lower cost, higher quality

Thus, the BRO is a real gamechanger for the geotechnical market. "It results in lower costs for information gathering and higher quality of decisions made. By its design, the BRO facilitates reuse and enrichment of data for data-driven decision-making, far-reaching analyses, subsurface modeling and digital twins. If we look around us we see beautiful initiatives and examples in which the potential of the BRO comes to the fore. Yet we are not there yet," Van der Made observes. "Apart from the forerunners, there are also users who have switched late and some of whom are still working with GEF formats. To facilitate the transition from GEF to IMBRO, a GEF converter was previously made available and maintained by the program BRO for soundings. This support is coming to an end, so the transition from GEF to IMBRO anno 2021 really has to be made anyway."

New application areas glimmer on the horizon

The BRO thus plays an important role in the digital future of geotechnical engineering in the Netherlands, Van der Made concludes. "But also internationally, the BRO offers good starting points for new developments and/or products. There are European funds available for digital twinning, hard work is being done on automated computing and the use of AI. These are all data-intensive applications to which the data and information from the BRO can make a fundamental contribution. After all, the data in the BRO is standardized, of high quality and is becoming increasingly extensive, thus opening up new areas of application. In addition to the practical use of digital geotechnical data from the BRO and other sources, there are other aspects that require attention, research and coordination. These include:

• Weighting past digital data when reused;
• Required standards changes (Eurocode) necessary to take full advantage of large data sets;
• The 3D understanding of uncertainties in the subsurface and socially acceptable levels for different categories of structures with associated socially responsible risk allocation OG and ON;
• Verifiability complex calculations, use validated computational hearts, digital formats for decision trees applied here.

All in all, a number of very interesting developments that now need further development, but where there are great opportunities for the GWW domain and where the BRO as a connecting data source can make a major contribution. However, this will only succeed if the digital subsurface data (BRO) really comes to life as everyone makes joint use of it, further complements and enriches the data."