Down to Earth

Imagine that you as an Owner, Design Engineer or a Contractor have to review the testing data of a foundation that was built at some point in the past. If the file format was proprietary you would have to find some particular program that could read that file; if on the other hand it was a format similar to, for example, the Portable Document Format (or PDF) it would be no problem. Why? Because PDF is an Open Format, and therefore files using this format can be read by all kinds of programs.

An Open Format is a published specification for storing digital data, usually maintained by a non-proprietary standards organization, and free of legal restrictions on use.

The use of an Open Format has two major advantages. First, it guarantees long-term access to data without any uncertainty (either now or in the future) with regard to legal rights or technical specifications. Secondly, it enables free and open competition, avoiding the situation whereby one vendor can use his control over a proprietary format to inhibit the use of competing products. Governments and regulatory agencies have increasingly shown an interest in the use of open file formats, and users are increasingly demanding programs using such a format.

It would be in the interest of the users community if this Open Format approach was adopted by all manufacturers of foundation testing equipment. And the GEF-CPT format (1999) could serve as a excellent reference for such a format. This format is used to exchange data obtained during Cone Penetration Testing and has the following features:
• Uniform:
Conversions belong to the past; the format offers completeness, as the structure stores all relevant information.
• Flexible:
In addition to the required minimal information, the user can add specific data.
• Unambiguous:
Storage of the measurement data is unambiguous.
• Directly applicable:
Conversion software to this format was made available to various companies during the development process. This means that application software was available as soon as the format was released. Furthermore, the direct applicability was enhanced by the availability of an Excel-conversion tool for importing and processing penetration test data as required.
• Freely available tools:
The format includes freely available tools to verify the supplied data and to make conversion programs.
• Usefulness:
The continuous development process, involving a large number of experts, has resulted in high quality and efficiency, allowing the format to be used efficiently, particularly on large projects involving many parties.

More details about this reporting format can be found in a report that is posted on GeoNet's website, and various programs to implement this open format can also be found on GeoNet's website.

Recently I have been promoting an Open Format for the foundation testing software, and in the upcoming annual conference of the Transportation Research Board (January 2010) we hope to organize a session on this subject. Hopefully such a session will take this initiative to the next level, because I strongly believe that we cannot have an Open Format for foundation testing software soon enough.