Detection of Unauthorized Construction Equipment in Pipeline Right-of-Ways

[摘要] The leading cause of incidents on transmission pipelines is damage by third-party construction equipment. A single incident can be devastating, causing death and millions of dollars of property loss. This damage would be prevented if potentially hazardous construction equipment could be detected, identified, and an alert given before the pipeline is hit. Currently there is no method for continuously monitoring a pipeline right-of-way. Instead, companies periodically walk or fly over the pipeline to find unauthorized construction activities. Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a system to solve this problem by using an optical fiber buried above the pipeline as a distributed sensor. A custom optical time domain reflectometer (OTDR) is used to interrogate the fiber. Key issues in the development of this technology are the ability to detect encroachment and the ability to discriminate among potentially hazardous and benign encroachments. Advantages of the reflectometry technique are the ability to accurately pinpoint the location of the construction activity and the ability to separately monitor simultaneously occurring events. The basic concept of using OTDR with an optical fiber buried above the pipeline to detect encroachment of construction equipment into the right of way works. Sufficiently rapid time response is possible; permitting discrimination between encroachment types. Additional work is required to improve the system into a practical device.

[发布日期] 2004-09-30 [发布机构] Institute of Gas Technology

[关键词] Reflection;Monitoring;Pipelines;Earthmoving Equipment;Optical Fibers