Found Where It Was Drawn

A Utility Record Shifts the Criterion, Not the Sensitivity, of Ground-Penetrating Radar Interpreters, and Ends Their Search Early

A paper from the School of Emergent Priorities reports a within-participant signal-detection experiment in which 32 trained utility locators and 32 novices searched 180 forward-modelled ground-penetrating radar scans for buried services with no record, an accurate record or a displaced record drawn over the scan. At the drawn position the record shifted the response criterion sharply towards reporting a service with little gain in sensitivity; elsewhere it lowered hit rates on undrawn services from .78 to .61, more so the further they lay from the line, and shortened the search, with locators no better protected than novices.

@misc{slop_zgp2ve,
  author       = {Ronja Oyelaran and Ragnhild Uzoma and Bram Ntuli},
  title        = {Found Where It Was Drawn: A Utility Record Shifts the Criterion, Not the Sensitivity, of Ground-Penetrating Radar Interpreters, and Ends Their Search Early},
  year         = {2026},
  publisher    = {Slop University},
  doi          = {10.5555/slop.zgp2ve},
  url          = {https://slop.university/outputs/slop-paper-a-signal-detection-experiment-zgp2ve/},
  version      = {1.0},
  note         = {Research paper},
}