Norway’s annual ‘Semantic Days’ conference gathers semantic web enthusiasts from oil and gas and other verticals. Kari Anne Haaland Thorsen (EPIM) opened the proceedings with a reminder that Norway’s costs are too high. Since 80% of Statoil’s costs are external, Norway’s prime minister has told Statoil, ‘make your suppliers competitive!’ Cost reductions are expected through the implementation of a generic information model (GIM), applicable across ‘industry, business and the public sector.’ Earlier Norwegian standards efforts went under 'Integrated operations’ (IO) banner. This is now refocusing on integrated work processes across domains and suppliers, on semantics, big data and offshore logistics. Rather grand claims are made for GIM’s potential to provide a ‘unifying logic,’ ‘proof,’ and ‘trust’ across use cases and stakeholders.
Under GIM’s broad banner we have the Integrated life cycle assets planning (ILAP) standard, presented by Glen Worral (Bentley), which sets out to ‘improve HSE and increase asset value through a common standard for planning data.’ A second standard ‘Equipment data requirements and conformance’ (EDRC) leverages POSC/Caesar’s ISO 15926 standard to 'achieve plug and play interoperability and savings.’ One EDRC objective is to provide a compliance mechanism for ISO 15926. An earlier semantic project found in 2012 that ‘the lack of rigorous methods for assessing conformance to ISO 15926 is a major barrier to industry adoption.’ Another facet is Data exchange within process industry (Dexpi), under test between Bentley and Siemens.
Tore Christiansen (Christiansen Consulting) described how GIM is used in supply chain standards, providing ‘a systematic way to ensure common understanding.' These include the EqHub (equipment data exchange) and ILAP for planning. Both build on a semantic core but communicate with the outside world via the more accessible XML.
Øyvind Mydland (StepChange) returned to the earlier Integrated operations (IO) project. High capacity network connectivity now facilitates onshore-offshore collaboration and real-time is now a gievn. But the movement has lost momentum. We still can't integrate across domain silos and IO is considered a ‘cost’ in major projects. Mydland advocates a new focus on 'capability,’ as opposed to technology. IO needs to be owned by top management.
Using semweb technology requires semantic specialists that are few and far between. At one juncture in Norway’s semantic effort a cry for help went out to Top Quadrant, developer of the Sparql semantic toolset and holder of one set of the keys to the semantic web. CTO Ralph Hodgson described a ’semantic ecosystem for oil and gas’ a.k.a. an alliance of Sparql and ISO 15926. Interoperability comes from ’semantic transformation of XML data to instances of ISO15926 ontologies.’
Thomas Røed explained how the Talisman/BP logistics centre supports marine operations, leveraging the EPIM Logistics Hub. The centre handles planning and scheduling activity across 11 vessels, 3 supply bases and 20 installations. A combination of Logistics Hub information and RFID keeps the schedule updated and automates tracking of cargo units.
The main successor to the IO project is the EU-sponsored Optique project, presented by Martin Skjæveland (Oslo University). Optique is essentially a reprise, at EU level, of IO with the promise of accessing data from different, incompatible sources through 'ontology-based data access.’ Only Statoil and Siemens remain in the Optique game. More from the Semantic Days website.
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