A novel neural network-based framework to estimate oil and gas pipelines life with missing input parameters

Abstract

Dry gas pipelines can encounter various operational, technical, and environmental issues, such as corrosion, leaks, spills, restrictions, and cyber threats. To address these difficulties, proactive maintenance and management and a new technological strategy are needed to increase safety, reliability, and efficiency. A novel neural network model for forecasting the life of a dry gas pipeline system and detecting the metal loss dimension class that is exposed to a harsh environment is presented in this study to handle the missing data. The proposed strategy blends the strength of deep learning techniques with industry-specific expertise. The main advantage of this study is to predict the pipeline life with a significant advantage of predicting the dimension classification of metal loss simultaneously employing a Bayesian regularization-based neural network framework when there are missing inputs in the datasets. The proposed intelligent model, trained on four pipeline datasets of a dry gas pipeline system, can predict the health condition of pipelines with high accuracy, even if there are missing parameters in the dataset. The proposed model using neural network technology generated satisfactory results in terms of numerical performance, with MSE and R2 values closer to 0 and 1, respectively. A few cases with missing input data are carried out, and the missing data is forecasted for each case. Then, a model is developed to predict the life condition of pipelines with the predicted missing input variables. The findings reveal that the model has the potential for real-world applications in the oil and gas sector for estimating the health condition of pipelines, even if there are missing input parameters. Additionally, multi-model comparative analysis and sensitivity analysis are incorporated, offering an extensive comprehension of multi-model prediction abilities and beneficial insights into the impact of various input variables on model outputs, thereby improving the interpretability and reliability of our results. The proposed framework could help business plans by lowering the chance of severe accidents and environmental harm with better safety and reliability.