TPI Tuesday – Landslide detected

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Where most of the detections made by CoSMiC-EYE are detections of activities undertaken by human, the system also detects natural changes, like landslides. In today’s example of one of the detections made you can clearly see a landslide that caused a wash-out in the pipeline corridor. Such natural changes can pose a threat to the pipeline as well, as it can lead to a reduced depth-of-cover, or even to pipeline exposure.

By combining SAR-data and multi-spectral data, Orbital Eye is able to detect a variety of activities in the pipeline corridor, ensuring that our customers are aware all of potential dangerous activities, whether they are anthropogenic or natural!

TPI Tuesday – Ground works and support site detected

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Today in TPI Tuesday we want to highlight a case where we detected a support site on top of the pipeline, close to ground works. In this case, the groundworks themselves were detected to be at a safe distance from the pipeline, but the support site poses a threat to the pipeline.

As explained in a TPI Tuesday of a few weeks back, companies and individuals in many countries are required to ask for a permit to conduct groundworks. Pipeline operators have access to the data about permits that have been given out, so they are aware of when groundworks close to their pipeline will take place.

It is not required to register support sites, sites where all the necessary material to conduct the groundworks are stored. However, the heavy machinery and containers that are often part of the support site, can still pose a threat to the pipeline as this causes an increased stress on the pipeline.

So, although the pipeline operator assumed in this case that the registered ground works would not be relevant to check, we still reported this location to the operator, which enabled them to take the necessary intervention.

 

TPI Tuesday – Storage Activity Detected

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This week in TPI Tuesday we show an example of where we detected a big pile of sand on top of the pipeline. Although the chance that the pipeline will be directly damaged by this is only small, the storage of materials on top of a pipeline causes increased stress on the pipeline, which can influence the condition of the pipeline. Therefore our customers want to be aware of these kind of activities as well, so they can take the necessary actions to have the materials removed.

Next to actively monitoring storage activities on top of pipelines, Orbital Eye can also look back in time and report storage activities that have taken place over the past years. Pipeline operators use this data to get more insight into possible causes of leakages that occur – or to determine which parts of a pipeline should be prioritised for maintenance. As you can imagine, the more materials have been stored on top of a pipeline, the more likely it is that the condition of that pipeline has deteriorated.

If you want to know more about how Orbital Eye can do an historical analysis of events that have taken place at a specific location, feel free to send an email to info@orbitaleye.nl!

TPI Tuesday – Groundworks detected

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Today we show another example of a TPI that involves groundworks, which is typically the type of activity that forms the largest threat to pipelines. In many countries, companies or individuals are therefore required to request a permit for doing such activities. For example, in the Netherlands, activities that involve groundworks need to be registered via a so-called ‘KLIC-melding’.

In our monitoring solution, we can integrate data about registered ground works – this enables our customers to conveniently check whether or not a TPI can be linked to one of these registered ground works. If a TPI can be linked to a registered ground-work, all available data for that ground work, such as the duration, the exact works taking place, and the company or individual undertaking that activity, is presented on the CoSMiC-EYE platform.

This in turn reduces costs and effort for operators, as they can find all data available for a TPI in one place – the CoSMiC-EYE platform -, and they can follow exactly when a registered ground work actually starts and ends.

TPI Tuesday – Tree clearing detected

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In this weeks episode we discuss a case of third party interference involving the clearance of trees. This type of activities can be particularly risky for underground utilities and critical infrastructure, especially when also the tree stumps are being removed.

Although, vegetation and deforestation monitoring are some of the more known applications of satellites in the context of third party risk management it is not the vegetation change, but the activity that caused it, that is relevant. This is simply because the activity might involve heavy machinery that has the potential to damage your infrastructure.

Orbital Eye’s CoSMiC-EYE solution monitors critical infrastructure using radar satellites, especially optimized to detect these type of third party activities early on, so there is still time for risk mitigation.

The image below shows before and after satellite imagery for a piece of land from which all trees and vegetation is cleared. The three insets on top detail the kind of info that can be extracted from sentinel-1, sentinel-2 and high-res optical satellite data. While Sentinel-1 provides the all-weather capability to detect the preparation or start of an activity on this location, both Sentinel-2 and High-Res optical data prove very valuable in assessing the type, exact nature and extent of the activity.

Orbital Eye combines all this information coming from different sources in their use-case tailored solutions!

TPI Tuesday – Large Groundworks Detected

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One of the largest threats to oil and gas pipelines are construction works that also involve ground works. CoSMiC-EYE is optimised to detect these activities, and we have detected numerous large groundworks already. In today’s GIF you can see an example of one of these detections; you can clearly see the works in the on-site picture as well as in the high-resolution optical image.

TPI Tuesday – Shed Construction Detected

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We often get the question what kind of activities we are able to detect with the CoSMiC-EYE monitoring technology and what the minimum size of an object should be before the radar satellite can detect an event. This question is very relevant, as the resolution of the Sentinel-1 satellite is 10 meter, which could make you think that objects or activities need to be at least 10 meter big before we can detect it.

However, we have many examples of where we detected an object or activity that it far smaller than 10 meters. This is mainly because our algorithms are also able to pick up scattering characteristics, and the phase, of the radar signal. The polarisation and phase of the radar signal tells something about the type of activity or event – which we also use to filter out irrelevant activities.

Today we present an example of a small shed that we detected in Trinidad and Tobago. What do we see in the GIF?

  • An on-site picture of the shed (which is far smaller than 10 meter!)
  • The radar imagery (with different polarisations) that was analysed to construct the change-blob and detect the shed
  • High-resolution optical imagery of before and after the shed was constructed

The data in this post was provided by several of our partners:

  • https://www.skywatch.com/
  • https://www.esa.int/
  • https://ngc.co.tt/

TPI Tuesday – Pipeline Repairs Detected

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Last week we showed you that we detected the collapsing river bank in Limburg. This week, we are showing the detection of the works that followed this collapse, which are also described in this post of Visser & Smit Hanab: https://lnkd.in/eeFX2Jpw:

What do we see in today’s GIF?

  • That repair works were detected at 4 different locations around the river, indicated by change blobs. These change blobs are automatically constructed by CoSMiC-EYE through analysis of a stack of weather independent SAR imagery.
  • High-resolution optical satellite imagery that was acquired after the repair works were detected through the SAR-imagery.
  • Sentinel-2 imagery (bottom-left picture) in which the works can be seen as well.

The advantage of using SAR imagery is that independent of whether there are clouds or not, activities can be detected. Besides, in order to also assess what’s going on exactly at the location where an activity is detected, we automatically task optical satellites to acquire an optical image for the location as soon as possible after the event was detected.

TPI Tuesday – Collapsing river bank detected

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This time, we want to showcase the detection of an event related to the flood that happened in the Netherlands this summer. In Limburg, the floods caused the collapsing of a riverbank, which led to pipeline exposure, which in turn led to a leakage. You can read all about it in this news article: https://lnkd.in/eYikm6bg

In the news article, it says that the pipeline exposure and leakage was detected in the morning on Monday the 19th of July via a routine control activity. Orbital Eye analysed radar images for this location, and saw the event was already visible on radar images of Saturday the 17th of July.

What do we see in the GIF?

  • In the background: high-resolution optical images of before, and after the river bank collapsed.
  • In the pop-up picture on the left: radar images, and the change detection image, where the change is the collapsing of the river bank.
  • In the pop-up picture on the right: Sentinel-2 images of before and after the event. These are medium-resolution optical images, but the collapse can be seen here as well. At Orbital Eye, we combine data from different satellites to detect events. However, in this case we see that the event was detected in 3 different satellite types!Next TPI Tuesday, we demonstrate what we detected at this location after the detection of the river bank collaps. Stay tuned!

Introducing TPI Tuesday!

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At Orbital Eye, we use satellite data to detect Third Party Interferences (TPIs) close to pipeline networks. On this news page, you will find regular posts related to TPIs that were detected by our monitoring system CoSMiC-EYE.
Today we present a TPI where a bridge was built in the middle of a meadow.
In the GIF, you can see:

  • In the background: a high-res SAR image
  • In the pop-up picture in the bottom left: an on-site picture of the detected activity
  • In the pop-up picture in the top right: the SAR imagery that was analyzed to detect this activity
  • The small picture in the middle: a high-res optical image of the meadow