National DIRT Report 2015 – Executive Summary
Each year, the CCGA Data Reporting and Evaluation Committee (DREC) collects information about damages to underground infrastructure reported in each province. In British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec, the data is collected through voluntary submission of information into a Virtual Private DIRT (Damage Information Reporting Tool) database. In Atlantic Canada, information is reported directly by participating infrastructure owners. Manitoba does not submit data to the CCGA DREC.
The purpose of the National DIRT Report is to identify national trends over time. The challenge to this point has been that only Quebec, Ontario and to a lesser-extent, British Columbia have collected enough data over a significant amount of time to begin identifying trends with real confidence in the data. In addition, bringing in data from new provinces each year requires re-balancing the dataset, which can have unintended effects on trend analysis if you are looking at specific regions.
That is not to say that the national data does not have value, but only that in its current state, the data has to be analyzed in deeper detail in order to fully appreciate its indications. For example, if one province has an increase in construction activity, it will show a corresponding increase in reported damages; or if the provincial notification centre reduces overall notifications per ticket, the analysis will show an increase in damages per notification. Over the next 2-3 years, national data will continue to increase and improve in quality to where it will have enormous value in making recommendations on a national scale, as well as giving the damage prevention industry a relatively accurate estimate of the societal costs of third party damages on underground infrastructure.
In order to see the most accurate trend analysis for a particular region or province, it is best to go to the originating data source and review the DIRT report specific to that regional partner:
Ontario 2015 DIRT Report
Quebec 2015 DIRT Report
Western Canada 2015 DIRT Report
We hope that the presentation of National Data is useful to your organization. We encourage you to participate in reporting damages to your provincial CGA or provincial Virtual Private DIRT and say thank you to everyone who already does so. The data collected can have significant impact on training, education and marketing initiatives in the damage prevention industry.
Sher Kirk, Chair
Data Reporting and Evaluation Committee
