The NPMS -A decision support and community education tool
Steven L. Fischer and Samuel W. Hall
U.S. Department of Transportation
Office of Pipeline Safety
400 7 th Street, S.W.
Washington, DC 20590
Abstract
The USDOT Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS) has partnered with other Federal and state
agencies and the pipeline industry to design and cost-effectively build a National Pipeline
Mapping System (NPMS). The NPMS is a voluntary initiative that relies on pipeline
operator participation. Standards have been developed that describe the content and
format requirements for the pipeline data and the submission procedures for the pipeline
operators. The NPMS has been in operation since the spring of 1999 and consists of a
single National Repository and fourteen state repositories. The NPMS depicts the
locations of the natural gas transmission pipelines, hazardous liquid trunklines, and
liquefied natural gas facilities operating in the United States. The system is used by OPS
as a decision support tool for ensuring pipeline integrity management as well as a tool for
community education. The NPMS consists of data layers representing hazardous liquid
high consequence areas, high hazard probability areas, and various base layers including
roads, political boundaries, and ZIP codes. The presentation will include a discussion of
integrity management data layers, the NPMS Internet-based mapping application,
procedures for downloading data, and the future role of the NPMS in integrity
management.
Introduction
The National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) is a geographic information system
(GIS) created by the U.S. Department of Transportation, Office of Pipeline Safety (OPS)
in cooperation with other Federal and state governmental agencies and the pipeline
industry. The NPMS consists of geospatial and attribute data and metadata related to the
interstate and intrastate natural gas transmission and hazardous liquid pipelines and
liquefied natural gas (LNG) facilities jurisdictional to OPS.
Pipeline operators on a voluntary basis submit the NPMS pipeline facility data. The
success of the initiative relies on the participation of the pipeline industry. OPS has
contacted and continues to communicate with members of the pipeline trade associations
regarding participation in the NPMS. As of June 27, 2001, the NPMS contained
approximately 86% of hazardous liquid and 42% of natural gas transmission pipeline
mileage under OPS jurisdiction, for a total of 55% of pipeline mileage being collected for
the NPMS.
OPS is now harnessing the power of GIS by using the NPMS as a tool for decision
support, emergency response, inspection planning, community access, and regulatory
compliance. With the help of the NPMS, OPS is moving forward with rulemakings that
require risk-based pipeline integrity management. Through visualization, geospatial
analysis, and the integration of various databases, OPS is using the NPMS to help ensure
the safe, reliable, and environmentally sound operation of the nation’s pipeline
transportation system.
One of the goals of the NPMS is to minimize the level of redundancy in the collection of
pipeline data. To this end, several state agencies already collecting pipeline data have
been selected as state repositories for the NPMS. OPS is also coordinating pipeline data
collection efforts with other Federal agencies to reduce the number of data requests that
pipeline operators receive. The ultimate goal is to better coordinate Federal and state
NPMS submission requirements to alleviate multiple submissions.
Regulatory requirement
The Accountable Pipeline Safety and Partnership Act states that OPS must adopt rules
requiring a pipeline operator to create and maintain accurate maps that identify the
location of the operator’s natural gas transmission, significant distribution, and major
hazardous liquid pipeline facilities in the state; a description of the characteristics of the
operator’s pipelines in the state; a description of the products transported through the
operator’s pipelines; and any other information that OPS considers useful to inform a
state of the presence of pipeline facilities and operations in the state. In addition, this
information is to be made available by the operators to OPS and appropriate state
officials upon request.
To meet the intent of the mandate, OPS is requesting that operators voluntarily submit
reasonably accurate geospatial and attribute data on natural gas transmission pipelines,
hazardous liquid trunklines, and LNG facilities operating in the United States. OPS has
developed standards for geospatial and attribute data and metadata for use by operators in
preparing their submissions to the NPMS.
The NPMS model
The NPMS consists of a National Repository and 14 state repositories. The National
Repository is headquartered in Alexandria, Virginia. State repositories are maintained by
various state agencies and universities, and currently reside in Alabama, California,
Connecticut, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey,
Oklahoma, Texas, Virginia, and Washington. State repositories are responsible for
processing the pipeline and LNG facility data within their state boundaries. Additional
state repositories are solicited through the Commerce Business Daily (CBD). The
National Repository is primarily responsible for processing data for states without
repositories, maintaining the NPMS Web site, and maintaining an Internet mapping
application. The National Repository incorporates data from the state repositories to
create a seamless national pipeline and LNG database, and serves as the final processing
and storage facility for all pipeline facility data.
Two NPMS standards documents exist. The Operator Standards describe how operators
can participate in the NPMS. The Repository Standards describe the operations of the
NPMS state and National repositories. The National Repository has also developed
metadata and attribute data software templates. The standards and templates are
available for download from the NPMS Web page at
www.npms.rspa.dot.gov.
Operators participating in the NPMS can submit their data to a state repository or the
National Repository, or both. Interstate operators submitting digital geospatial data have
two options. The first option is to send the entire digital data set to the National
Repository for processing. The second option is to send the data that lie within states
with repositories to those state repositories. Most interstate operators are choosing to
send their entire digital submissions to the National Repository. Interstate operators that
are submitting paper maps must send the data that lie within states with repositories to the
state repositories. Intrastate operators submitting either paper maps or digital data must
submit data within a state with a repository to that state’s repository. Any portion of
either an intrastate or an interstate pipeline that is within a state with no repository must
be sent to the National Repository.
