Recent Developments in the Design and Application of the PIPESAFE Risk Assessment Package for Gas Transmission Pipelines

PIPESAFE is a hazard and risk assessment package for gas transmission pipelines, developed by Advantica for an international group of gas pipeline companies. Although the likelihood of failure of transmission pipelines is very low, the possibility of failure and a subsequent fire cannot be discounted. PIPESAFE provides the means to take consistent and informed decisions on risk issues, including infringements to pipeline design codes, uprating of pipelines (i.e. to operate at higher pressures), pipeline routeing and land use planning. The development of PIPESAFE was first reported at IPC ’98. This paper describes recent enhancements to the package, validation of the predictions against full-scale experiments and incidents, and modifications to the risk calculation methods. The paper also describes risk criteria developed in the UK and The Netherlands, the background to their development, and the use of PIPESAFE to generate risk criteria included in the latest edition of the UK pipeline code IGE/TD/1.