Oil and gas (O&G) pipelines are expensive assets that cross through both ecologically sensitive and densely populated urban areas. If pipelines are not well maintained, they may fail with potentially significant consequences that could have severe, long-term and irreversible impacts on both natural and human environments.
The United States Department of Transportation reported more than 10,000 failures in O&G networks across the country which caused losses around six billion US dollars in the form of property damage, production losses, environmental impact, and human casualties. The 2013 American Infrastructure Score Card described the condition of O&G pipelines in America as ‘poor’ (Parvizsedghy, Senouci, Zayed, Mirahadi, & El10 Abbasy, 2014).
Excessive infrastructure failures can lead to poor performance, and, consequently production loss and high economic impact (Biondini & Frangopol, 2015; Castro & Sanjuán, 2008). Therefore, to avoid failure and to improve the reliability of infrastructure, planned maintenance is the integral activity (Hongzhou Wang, 2002)
By Hassan Iqbal, Husnain Haider, Solomon Tesfamariam, Rehan Sadiq