After spate of cave-ins, BMC to restart road mapping project

What lies beneath Mumbai’s seething roads, a project which had remained incomplete after the death of SL Bodas, a senior lecturer from the Civil and Environment department at Veermata Jijabai Technological Institute (VJTI), will now be reopened.

Sumedh Mhaske, an assistant professor from the same department will take up the responsibility.

Following the spate of cave-ins at Saat Rasta and the furore over the digging up of Peddar Road, a year ago, the BMC is taking help from VJTI to find out the major cavities in the road at Saat Rasta, with the help of modern technology called ground penetrating radar.

Mhaske said, “We will work on the BMC project in July 2011, as I have to learn to operate this machine and simultaneously work on a PhD at IIT-Bombay. But we will definitely complete the project. Recently, we did similar work for the airport authority at Santa Cruz.”

“With this modern technology we can identify if there are any major cavities, soil erosion and cracks in the over 100-year-old pipelines running four metres below the ground level. We will also know pipes’ position, leakages and seepages,” he added.

The radar can detect objects, accurately and nondestructively ‘see’ through solid pavement materials, such as asphalt, concrete and soil to detect subsurface objects and determine the condition and thickness of the material examined.

It can be used in archaeology, in the testing of structures and pavements, locating buried structures and utility lines.

VJTI bought this machine two year ago for Rs34 lakh, the only of its kind in Mumbai.