GIS systems on the pipelines thermographic aerial inspection

Abstract

This article is about the implementation of Geographical Information System (GIS) with Thermographic technologies for oil and gas pipelines aerial inspection. Since every pipeline under pressure is prone to present leaks, several methods have been investigated and implemented for leakage detection among them, thermographic methods play an outstanding role. Since every leak in the pipeline modifies its temperature environment, whatever the state (solid, liquid or gas), it is feasible to detect this change through a video infrared camera. This is the core principle for thermographic leakage detection however, when applied to aerial surveillance several issues such as: interpretation of the IR scenes, accuracy on tracking the route of the pipeline and locating events, accurate quantitative thermal measurement or estimation, among others; make difficult the detection process. In this work it is presented a system to cope with the mentioned problems. Equipment, software and some inspection results using this system are presented.