Information structuring and risk-based inspection for the marine oil pipelines

• Maintenance and inspection tasks or activities used to examine sensitive equipment.
• Hierarchical description of concepts for an elaboration of the functional topology.
• Implementation of a Risk Based Inspection (RBI) method with a criticality analysis.
• Application of RBI to ensure operational safety of pipeline in petroleum industry.
• Incorporation of expert knowledge into RBI is helping to find the appropriate plan.

The proposed work is incorporated into the research theme concerning the maintenance and inspection of sensitive facilities in production systems. It is essential to promote the methodological deployment of inspection techniques to ensure the good functioning of services provided by complex production systems as well as their different components. We use a risk-based inspection methodology offering an organized analysis with knowledge sharing for collaborative possibilities in a multidisciplinary context and it consists of the following steps: data acquisition and information collection, failure analysis (probability and consequences), risk assessment, inspection plan, mitigation and revaluation. The application of this methodology can improve the maintenance management strategies of industrial companies. The inspection department is able to forecast its potential failure, root causes and impacts on the safe operation of the considered production system, based on a reliable inventory of existing situations and review options for continuous improvement in maintenance management. In particular, we addressed the application of a Risk-Based Inspection (RBI) methodology in the French petroleum company with operations on the west coast of central and southern Africa. The incorporation of expert knowledge into risk assessment is helping to find the best preventive plan for pipeline inspection in the case study.