Geohazard screening using a new and rapid IMU inspection service
Proceedings Publication Date
Presenter
Beatrice Haring
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Beatrice Haring, Klaas Kole, Andy Young
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Abstract

Throughout Europe, climate change has intensified rainfall and raised mean temperatures, increasing the prevalence of geohazards such as landslides, including debris flows, erosion, and flooding. Buried pipelines are particularly vulnerable to these hazards, resulting in pipeline movement and bending strain. If the geohazards remain undetected, the incremental build-up of loads will ultimately fail the pipeline. More and more operators whose pipelines are located in areas susceptible to geohazards utilize Inertial Measurement Units (IMU) as an indispensable component of pipeline integrity management. Typically, IMUs are integrated into combo technology platforms. While these technologies can provide additional relevant information on the nature of the threat, these sophisticated systems require substantial resources to run, have possibly limited availability, and longer lead times. These prerequisites result in higher operational costs and more time for hazards to increase damaging levels. With this in mind, ROSEN has developed the RoGeo PD (PipeDrift) technology platform to provide pipeline operators with the option of running a simplified and more efficient inertial inspection system. This platform forms a rapid first screening capability for a pipeline that is under threat of ground movement hazards and adds valuable input for the interpretation of the hazard and the evaluation of pipeline integrity.

The RoGeo PD platform combines an IMU with a standard cleaning tool, allowing operators to successfully mobilize and deploy the IMU with significantly less effort, thus reducing costs and resources. The solution was proven on a pipeline system with known movement areas and historical in-line inspection (ILI) data.

The RoGeo PD system was successfully deployed multiple times in 2021, and this paper gives some insights into the results of those inspections. An overview of the RoGeo PD technology platform is presented, along with comparisons of the RoGeo PD inspections to the more conventional datasets collected via extended caliper tools.

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