Traditionally, pipeline health is determined by periodical run-throughs of sensor tools of the pipeline. The resulting data is then used to determine actions on the pipeline such as exploration digs and repairs. These sensor tools can be of varying technologies such as in-line magnetic sensors, ultrasonic tools, as well as indirect electrical surveys. With no standardized format nor spatial component analytics for these tools provided me with an awesome opportunity to provide deeper insights with FME.
Using FME to standardize the data and then spatialize the data in both 2D and 3D allows our pipeline integrity team to analyze these pipelines in a much more detailed fashion to observe pipeline health. Not only are engineers able to utilize GIS to observe if pipeline anomalies are caused by environmental factors, the engineers are now able to layer many vintages of various tools to observe anomaly growth and target problematic issues far in advance away from catastrophic events happening.
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Agenda
● Introduction to Integrity Data and its
Richness
● Identifying Opportunity in the Data
● What are the Challenges
● Solutioning and Algorithm Run Through
● Results and Learnings
● Organic and Future Growth
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What is Integrity Data?
Integrity Data is pipeline health reports derived from
various methods of detection such as:
In Line Inspection with Magnetic Flux Leakage
(MFL) Data
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What is Integrity Data? (cont.)
Integrity Data is pipeline health reports derived from
various methods detection such as:
Ultrasonic Crack Detection Data
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What is Integrity Data? (cont.)
Integrity Data is pipeline health reports derived from
various methods detection such as:
Indirect Current (DCVG/ACVG) Inspection
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What is Integrity Data? (cont.)
Integrity Data is pipeline health reports derived from
various methods detection such as:
Cathodic Protection Current Inspections
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Opportunity?
These tools all have similar goals, which is to detect
anomalies & deficiency in pipelines health and have
similar outputting spreadsheets.
Not only is the data from various tools, but also have
different vintages.
How Can We Unify all these formats, tools and vintages
together?
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Challenges?
Every vendor of the data has a slightly different format
for their outputting spreadsheet format
Accounting for inevitable error of wrong positional call
outs, whether by slippage of the tool or misalignment
Results needs to be accessible to non-GIS users
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Solution: Standardize Data & Spatialize
Standardization and
Ingestion to PODS
Spatialize into GIS Data
with FME
Source:
Spreadsheet Format
Non-Standardized
Result:
Platform to visualize
Integrity data and
perform deeper
analytics
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Data Standardization
FME is our premier tool for the ETL (Extract, Transform, Load) process into our PODS (Pipeline
Open Data Standard) database
This process was extended to ingest the already existing tables in the PODS hierarchy (ILI_Data &
ILI_Cluster)
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Account for Slippage and Error
Error in tool runs are accounted for by scaling data to a
master/trusted tool run that creates the geometry of the pipeline
anomalies
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Spatialize According to Angle, Clock Position and
Exact Sizing
Originating Position of Anomalies are varied by vendors and technology, this portion of the workbench accounts for
call outs for (center, upper left, center left, and etc.)
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Creating a Welcoming and Easy to Use Environment
Create a Splayed Pipeline: unroll the pipeline to visually see where the anomaly is positioned
Create a Weld Joint Line: Establish visual quick referencing points
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End Result (cont.)
Immediate ‘Wins’
• Ability to predict causes of anomaly (eg: close to waterbody, in a valley, possible interference from
3rd
party lines) as part of being able to integrate with a visually GIS platform
• Ability to cross reference various tools to observe whether there is anomaly growth due to
compounding pipeline health factors (eg: Cathodic disbondment/Cracking & external and internal
pipeline degradation)
• Ability to rapidly reference data spatially, making using a GIS platform the premier location for
further analytics for the integrity engineering team
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End Result (cont.)
Key Learnings
• Spreadsheet data, or legacy data in general, can contain a wealth of data. With FME there are
countless possibilities to extend traditionally boring data
• By leveraging many vintages of data past and incoming surveys, an opportunity to observe
development temporally has naturally occurred and because a major value statement
• Organic Growth of this
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End Result: Change in Behavior
Organic Growth and New Use Cases:
• Finding older vintages of integrity data and overlaying with newer data (various differing and similar
tool technology) has enabled temporal analytics to observe growth of possible failure spots
• Using temporal analytics to schedule digs and repair at a greater confidence level and reducing
time for actionable tasks to improve pipeline safety
Current New Growth Use Case:
• Developing an Integration with history dig repairs to ensure work quality and if growth area of
pipeline issues persist
• Further develop algorithms to have FME or possible machine learning software to recognize
troubled or growing issues on a pipeline