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Risk and Asset Management
The pipes and other system features themselves require some analytical and historical tracking. The choice to repair, rehabilitate, or postpone falls under risk management as it is the process of making and implementing decisions that will minimize the adverse effects of accidental and business losses on an organization. Conducting a risk management assessment for a pipeline on a joint-by-joint basis requires the capabilities of a fully functioning GIS environment because of the large amounts of data and computational time required.
Once decisions are made, the documentation and archival of the implications of the decision usually becomes one of asset management. A distressed pipe may be replaced and taken out of service but can still exist as a historical record to be referenced in management system including the decision to repair, repair notes and photos, and related inspection and assessment documentation .
Even a simple comparison report of changes in pre-stressing wire breaks between inspections is a relatively simple procedure that would take a long time to prepare without the use of a GIS given the number of pipe joints per mile of pipeline. Calculating which pipes will fail is a more complicated study because of the many different variables involved other than the number of pipe breaks.
One method of determining those pipes to replace is by looking for individual joints with a certain number of wire breaks, in a specific area of the pipe, bar rating, and wire pitch.
Failure analysis by selecting pipes with certain characteristics.
Models and parameters regarding integrity priorities, formulated to include the spatial aspects or otherwise, to calculate those pipes with the highest degree of failure increase the accuracy of the model and offer quick analysis and multiple scenarios.
Once a list of pipes needing repair or replacement is in hand, an operator needs a rehabilitation plan. Since budgets are not limitless, not all pipes can be repaired. Cost analysis is again a simple procedure using a GIS because in addition to pipe information, the operator also has other map layers that show, topography, land use, customer locations, etc. This external data provides the basis for a cost analysis and can aid in developing a priority ranking for the most and least critical repair projects.
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