Pipeline Integrity Management: An Approach to Geotechnical Risks

Linear works, such as highways, power lines, gas and oil pipelines among others, as well as other types of engineering works can be threaten by natural hazards, such as landslides, floods, erosions, earthquakes, hurricanes, seaquakes and others, which may lead to great environmental impacts, very high sum of money lost and even deaths. Aiming to reduce geological and geotechnical risks, preventive or corrective actions can be executed from the design phase to the operational and maintenance stages in pipelines. In the last phase, an integrity management plan can be adopted to mitigate residual risks not covered on the design and construction phases. One of the alternatives to implement a gas pipeline integrity management is found in the code “Managing System Integrity of Gas Pipelines” – ASME B31.8S (2005). However, this code has some limitations in actions concerning to prevention, identification and correction of geological and geotechnical problems. This paper presents information about geotechnical risks in transmission pipelines and tools applied in identification, prevention and correction of geotechnical problems in pipelines, as well as, others that can potentially be applied in pipelines. A basic pipeline integrity management plan focused on geotechnical risks is proposed in the paper, transcribed as a contribution to ASME B31.8S Code. This plan is composed by actions: from identification, prevention, evaluation and analysis to correction of geotechnical instabilities in pipelines. It is composed by a flowchart with all actions selected for the geotechnical risk care. The plan was developed based on directions set in ASME B31.8S Code, including Brazilian, Italian and Canadian experiences.