Detection of Unauthorized Construction Equipment in Pipeline Right-of-Ways. Quarterly Technical Report (October 1 through-December 31, 2002)

摘要

Natural gas transmission companies mark the right-of-way areas where pipelines are buried with warning signs to prevent accidental third-party damage. Nevertheless, pipelines are sometimes damaged 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 was damaged. The Gas Technology Institute (GTI) is developing a system to solve this problem by using an optical fiber as a distributed sensor and interrogating the fiber with a custom optical time domain reflectometer. Key issues are the ability to detect encroachment and the ability to discriminate among potentially hazardous and benign encroachments. The work performed in the 4th quarter of 2002 included fine-tuning and debugging of the custom Optical Time Domain Reflectometer being constructed for data collection and analysis. It also included installation of optical fibers at the test site along an operating pipeline.