Integration of External Corrosion Direct Assessment with Integrity Management Software Application

To enhance the approach and methodology of the External Corrosion Direct Assessment process, integration into integrity management software provides an opportunity to optimize External Corrosion Direct Assessment (ECDA).  Manual analysis of a large system data set often results in complex and multifarious determinations of ECDA feasibility, indirect inspection tool selection, and ECDA region identification, as these steps frequently amount to thousands of determinations.  Integrity management software with the ability to dynamically segment pipelines into analysis segments provide for a powerful and efficient means of ECDA analysis.  Based on user specified criteria, these software platforms substantially reduce analysis time, while reducing the potential for human error associated with manual analysis.  Results analysis of modified criteria and rerunning the analysis is relatively simple to achieve the desired determinations.

As most pipeline operators are currently doing some form of risk analysis, and considerable amount of risk analysis data is common to ECDA analysis, integration of the ECDA process into integrity management software allows for a cost effective means of leveraging existing risk data.  Integrity management software which has incorporated a predominantly automated integration of cathodic protection data collection further facilitates efficiencies and cost savings.  The combination of these systems allows for the improvement of integrity management in that more resources can be allocated to results analysis and decision making rather than data integration, correlation and processing.

This paper will illustrate an example of the integration of the ECDA process and a cathodic protection data collection system into a risk analysis software application.