System Approach for Monitoring and Risk Assessment for Natural Force Damage to Gas Pipelines

Project Innovation

This project will utilize a novel approach to integrate technologies to monitor and track ground motion and impacts on pipeline integrity in California through a complete system approach to help pipeline operators make effective decisions in near real-time. Data will be collected using technologies that are divided into two groups: direct measurements (technologies measuring pipe strain) and indirect measurements (technologies measuring ground displacement). These two approaches to data collection will facilitate monitoring of geohazard impacts under any natural hazard ground motion scenario (i.e., earthquake, landslide, subsidence, and liquefaction). A pipeline fragility (or capacity) model will then be employed to combine both direct and indirect measurements to provide a prediction of the gas pipeline probability of failure. Finally, the data processing algorithms and fragility model will be incorporated into a user-friendly, free, and open-source software package for gas pipeline operator decision-making.