proceduresdata gatheringanalysis and commercial consideration in terms of both production and operations and maintenance costs. The primary objective of an integrity program is to maintain the pipeline in a fitness-for-purpose condition and in a safe and cost-effective manner.”Pipeline integrity management (IM) is a complex process involving people, assets, procedures, data gathering, analysis…
Standards and codes of practice are available which provide clear guidance for the practical implementation of pipeline IM in a logical and consistent mannerfor example codes ranging from API1160 and ASMEB31Sto specialised codes for defect assessment such as ASMEB31G and RSTRENG.
However todayvast amounts of information are generated during the IM process and software tools become a necessity for practical implementation. This includes essential elements such as:
o Effective data management to ensure the critical and most up to date information is readily available.
o Appropriate assessment tools to enable engineers to most effectively interrogate and interpret that data to support their integrity decisions.
o Documentation of the integrity assessments conducted.
o An auditable record of the overall IM process.
o Incorporated rights management to ensure enterprise wide role definitions are reflected in the work process.
There is always a concern that IM systems can become unnecessarily complex and difficult and expensive to implement and maintain. Therefore a primary requisite for any software tool must be that is flexible and allow for customisation to suit the needs of a wide range of operators.
The Rosen Asset Integrity Management Software (ROAIMS) is made up of a number of functional modules that can be combined to configure different IM applications. Following an initial audit of an operator’s specific requirement the system can be customised as neededranging from a simple data storage/repository to a comprehensive integrated IM software solution.
The Asset Manager is the central application of the pipeline integrity system. It is data administration and storage for pipeline systemsand also allows for accessing specific applications required by the user while running a pipeline integrity program.
GeoSpatial Analyst is the tool to bring all possible kinds of pipeline integrity related data in a geographical context. This application allows for manipulating data in a geographical environment providing easier means for visualising results along the pipeline route. It has the capability to interact with GIS platforms and existing geodatabases.
The purpose of the Risk Assessment application is to assess and identify what threats to integrity are active along the pipeline route. To fulfil this taskthe risk assessment is based on a set of adjustable rules derived from codes and industry best practiceseg API1160 and ASMEB31.8S. A customisable consequence model reflects the impact in case of a failure. The resulting ranking of risk factors identifies those segments at greatest risk and where mitigation actions need to be applied.
Spillage Assessment predicts the severity of potential spills to support the development of pollution response and contingency plans. It uses pumping ratesresponse times and location of block valves and elevations profiles to determine the potential spillage caused by a rupture or a leak.
The Feature Assessment application helps to manage the enormous amount of data resulting from a pipeline in-line inspection. It allows for easy access to all data recorded during the survey and all reported results of a given pipeline. Not only the raw data can be reviewed with different display optionsbut also allows for conducting queriesviewing charts and reports to assess the actual state of the pipeline.
With the aim of providing a view of future conditions of the pipeline to supporting planning and decision making processes the Corrosion Growth Timeline uses results of in-line inspection and corrosion growth rates to define projections of pipeline features.
Bringing data from different sources to a common reference system is the main goal of the Data Alignment Manager. Common reference systems can be GPS co-ordinatesodometer or log-distancemilepostssurface referencesetc. This process is required for doing data integration which is a fundamental step for data analysis.
The Data Alignment Analyst provides powerful functionalities to derive new information from existing data. It has the capability to connect to several data sources and display the information in an integral manner over the log distance. Furthermorethe aligned data resulting in this tool can be used to segment the pipeline during a risk assessment exercise.
The semi-quantitative risk model of the Risk Assessment module considers more than twenty threats that may impact the integrity of a pipeline. One of these threats is CP Underprotectionwhich is considered one possible root cause for external corrosion. Assuming this threat has been confirmed by means of ILI resultsanalysing other related informationsuch as CP readingscan help to better understand the problem. To achieve this task data alignment is used for defining a common reference system. Following a standardisation process the resulting file is uploaded into a common databasewhich in turn contains all the information along the chaineage of the pipeline. Data Alignment Analyst orincluding the spatial componentGeoSpatial Analyst help to compare all information along the line against each otherwhich already outlines some dependencies.
The level of confidence of the risk assessment results depends on the quality of the information used to feed the system. Using old data or not having the required data will impact the outcome and may even result in a faulty assignation of priorities. All necessary parameters needed to identify active threats and the rules defining their interactions are contained in the risk model of Risk Assessment.
Segmentation of the pipeline can be achieved either directly from the aligned bands in Data Alignment Analyst or based on information derived from a geo-referenced routes mapped onto satellite images. The resulting segmentation becomes a direct input to the risk model to then apply the interaction rules for producing a susceptibility level for the threat to occur.
The risk level of each threat is then calculated by multiplying the susceptibility level with the values of the customisable consequence model.
Assuming that the threat of external corrosion caused by CP Underprotection was confirmed and guidance is provided to identify the optimum polarisation requirements depending on soil conditionsthe sensible follow up step would be to define how long the pipeline remains functional before particular features become a critical safety concern? To address this issueCorrosion Growth Timeline is utilised in combination with Feature Assessment to determine future repair requirementsre-inspection intervals and the preparation of annual repair budgets.
Conclusion
A primary condition of IM software tools is to remain flexible to allow the customisation and therefore facilitating their adoption to a wide range of operators. The specific needs resulting from an
initial GAP analysis can be met by selecting and combining the functional modules of ROAIMS. This
level of flexibility is the highlight of this leading edge asset integrity management system.o
Enter 73 or at www.engineerlive.com/iog
Carlos E Sabido PonceMScCommunication Engineeringand Markus BrorsGeomatics Engineerare with ROSEN Technology and Research Center GermanyLingenGermany. www.roseninspection.net; John HealyPhDMechanical Engineeris with MACAW EngineeringNewcastleUK. www.macawengineering.com
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