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GIS based decision support for gas pipe maintenance
 Kathrin Kirchner Department of Business Information Systems, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany k.kirchner@wiwi.uni-jena.de Abstrct Pipelines worldwide have suffered from the effects of time and corrosion. The integrity and reliability of pipes are therefore issues of concern and focus of all pipeline operators. Geographic information systems are employed to document the state of the pipeline network. The transition from this documentary character to a GIS based decision support system gives additional use and utility to information already stored. 1 Introduction The Middle East has huge reserves of natural gas. Growth in the gas sector is also taking place in the domestic market, where the use of natural gas has increased as well as in the export market. As a result of this product demand from local and international markets, the Middle East is well aware of transporting gas as cost effectively as possible. Maintaining the economic viability of new and existing pipeline infrastructure is important today because there are fewer margins for design, operational and financial error. As new operators come on line the existing infrastructure have to be reliable as the new pipes being built. (AME Info, 2005) GIS has become an indispensable tool of daily work in gas utility companies. Most of them have used GIS to document their pipeline network. Despite their cost, most GIS have done little more than replace paper-drawn maps. Utilizing the data stored in a GIS for planning purposes in pipe maintenance can reap large cost savings and helps the company to make complex decisions. A spatial decision support system (SDSS) is an interactive, computer-based system for supporting a user or a group of users in achieving a higher effectiveness of decision making while solving a semi-structured geographically related decision problem (Keenan, 2003). Adopting the SDSS paradigm will harness the power of a GIS. In this paper this concept is developed to prototypical use for the case of gas pipe maintenance. 2 Key issues in gas pipe maintenance Reliability of supply and low operating cost are the main targets of pipeline operators. Preventive maintenance forms the substantial part of all cost components. Inspection and leakage check for a gas network is done on a regular, scheduled basis by the stuff of the utility company. Based on these information, a maintenance plan is made on a monthly or quarterly basis. A choice of several maintenance techniques is possible, depending on characteristics like pipe material or the number of stub connections. Several in-situ techniques can be used instead of the dig-a-trench methods. They offer an additional benefit in keeping traffic and neighbour disturbances to a minimum. Only about 1/8 of the total repair cost is on account of material and on immediate labour for pipeline replacement. Another quarter is spent for earthworks and the half of the cost goes to reconstruction of road surface, see figure 1. Pooling of activities in close local proximity thus holds large savings potential, cause a least part of side setup cost can be saved. Considering the list of preventive maintenance measures this calls for a computerized spatial decision support system.  Figure 1: Maintenance Cost
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