By leveraging the Brix Rule Engine, Orbit+ Pipeline can deliver customer-specific rule sets with no programming effort. The approach is used for screening large amounts of data for threats, damages and failures.

Judging potential damage from the threats a pipeline is exposed to is integral to risk assessment. Huge amounts of data are collected for the pipeline, be it inspection and monitoring results or material data. Industry-specific rule sets for integrity management have been developed by standards bodies, operating companies and authorities. Applying such rules is a vital part of performing risk assessment for the pipelines.

However, developing and maintaining software that cater for the huge variability, both in the rules themselves and their usage, is complex. For Orbit+ Pipeline, it was an overriding requirement that risk screening rules should be configurable to each customer: and also that pipeline engineering skills, rather than C# programming skills, should determine who could best configure the rules for risk screening.

Orbit+ Pipeline’s Risk Screener meets these requirements for flexibility without compromising its maintainability, applying a three-step approach to gain flexibility.

To start with, the rules themselves are defined and maintained in the Brix Rule Engine. This means that rule definition is separated from rule execution. In Orbit+ Pipeline, there are separate rules for assessing probability and consequence of failure, and for risk through a matrix.

Secondly, a configuration area for customer-specific settings is provided; each customer defines which threats should apply to which pipelines, and hence which rules should apply to which threat. Thirdly, the Risk Screener’s user interface lets the users include, exclude and tweak rules on the fly. One can screen for probability, consequence or risk by combining the results in a risk matrix.

Using all together, we can deliver Orbit+ Pipeline with DNV’s best practice risk screening rules, and combine this with both regulatory and customer-specific rules.