The Pipeline Data Model Association held the 2015 Operators’ Forum in Houston earlier this year. The pipeline industry is facing challenges from increasing data volumes driven in part by more stringent regulatory data requirements. On the IT front there is a need to make pipeline GIS more accessible, to track the multiple technology advances while assuring interoperability. PODS in engaged in reorganizing itself to better respond to all of the above with a next generation version of the PODS data model at center stage. Ongoing strategic initiatives include defining a ‘standard’ PODS implementation with sample views and standard reports for NPMS and PDMSA, Esri Spatial modularization and a PODS ‘lite’ edition. The data model is also to be extended to the offshore and construction domains. PODS is also working to finalize its PODS ArcGis linear referencing model (Alrp—Oil IT Journal Vol 20 N° 3) for the Alrp 1.0 released towards the end of later this year.
Tony Rizk outlined Boardwalk Pipeline Partners’ geographic information system (GIS) modernization. This set out to build an infrastructure for modern field data collection, simplifying data validation and help field workers to ‘know their systems, know the risks and manage the integrity of Boardwalk’s assets. This has involved the migration of all subsidiaries to a uniform PODS/ESRI spatial platform that allows native Esri tools. Boardwalk has automated the production of alignment sheets and developed tools for high consequence analysis, maximum allowable operating pressure and other risk-based analytics. Internal and external corrosion data sources (CorrMD and CPDM) are now synced with the GIS as are OneCall (IRTHnet) tickets for third party damage data. The ‘first of its kind’ system leverages a cloud-based GIS running on the Amazon EC2 environment. Users with Boardwalk credentials can access the system from anywhere in the world. The end user GIS viewer is driven by Google Maps. In view of Google’s shifting stance on its Maps API (see the PetroDE interview on page 3 of this issue), there is an alternative GIS front end that uses Willbro’s Integra Link. With the new system, field personnel are identifying errors in the records and alignment sheets. As Rizk concluded, ‘We now have hundreds of eyes in the field to validate our data.’ Read the PODS Operators presentations here.
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