2017 13th International Conference on Natural Computation, Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery (ICNC-FSKD 2017)
Risk Index Assessment for Urban Natural Gas
Pipeline Leakage based on Artificial Neural Network
Yang Zhou
Department of Engineering Physics
Tsinghua University
Beijing, P. R. China
Abstract—With large-scale construction of urban natural gas
pipelines, the occurrence of accidents such as fire, explosion
owing to natural gas pipeline leakage has increased. How to make
appropriate response strategy for urban natural gas pipeline
leakage is an important topic for urban safety planner. This
paper proposed an assessment program to evaluate risk of urban
natural gas pipeline leakage. This system uses artificial neural
network mode, which includes 10 inputs such as methane
concentration, weather, corrosion, to simulate risk index of
pipeline leakage. The 97-day field operation results showed that
the risk index match well with field situation, which indicates the
reliability and practicability of the assessment program.
Keywords-natural gas pipeline leakage; leakage assessment;
urban safety; artificial neural network; risk assess
I. INTRODUCTION
As an important public infrastructure in modern city, the
natural gas pipeline, which is also called “urban lifeline”,
distributes the gas to everywhere in the city, which brings the
living convenience to the urban residents and provides the
strong support and security for the city operation. Compared
with other pipeline equipment (such as water supply and
heating pipeline), the natural gas pipeline carries natural gas
which is featured with inflammability and explosion, strong
toxicity and fast diffusion. Therefore, any leakage or failure of
the pipeline not only causes disastrous consequences like fire,
explosion and toxic gas leakage, but also affects the operation
of other pipe network and leads to a chain reaction, even
complete paralysis of large area in urban, which will cause
heavy economic losses. How to strengthen the monitoring and
pre-warning of urban gas pipeline, assess risk of pipeline
leakage according to relevant environment, develop a
reasonable and effective emergency response strategy, is an
important topic for urban public safety researchers.
Currently, there are two kinds of risk assessment
programs for natural gas pipeline leakage. One assessment
program is to simulate gas leakage and diffusion process based
on the different theoretical models[1-4]. These simulations can
estimate the effective height of the leakage source, and analyze
the leakage and diffusion velocity of the gas qualitatively,
generate the diffusion gas concentration field and conduct the
diffusion hazard range. Then, the hazard level can be identified
in accordance with the gas explosive probability model. The
other program is to analyze characters of the monitoring data of
the pipeline based on the data statistical method, and determine
978-1-5386-2165-3/17/$31.00 ©2017 IEEE
Zhengwei Wu
Hefei Institute for Public Safety Research
Tsinghua University
Hefei, P. R. China
the leakage source and its location and developing a
corresponding response system.
There exist many defects in the actual pipeline monitor
and manage systems based on the theoretical model, mainly
because the existing model cannot fully describe the leakage
and diffusion process of natural gas pipeline exactly.
Specifically, the Gaussian model is one of gas leakage and
diffusion model widely adopted in pipeline monitor system,
which is only applicable to the following condition that two
gases have the same pressure with low relative velocity,
irrespective of the effect of the initial injection in gas leakage
and gravity during gas diffusion. Not relying on the specific
theoretical model, leakage detection based on data statistics
method extracts characters from the historical data by reverse
statistical analysis to determine the gas leakage and location.
Compared with assessment program based on theoretical
model, the data statistics program is much reliable in practice
with low false alarm rate.
It is important to note that the above two risk assessment
programs are created and developed from early stage of natural
gas pipeline construction. So two programs are mainly aimed at
suburban or outdoor gas pipeline leakage, which have certain
limitations to be applied in the risk assessment of urban natural
gas pipeline leakage. Firstly, the urban natural gas pipelines are
mostly buried underground due to the city's restrictions in
construction, which is not applied for traditional gas leakage
and diffusion model. Secondly, the distance between the urban
natural gas pipeline and other pipelines (water supply, heating
pipeline and etc.) are usually close, thus leakage may lead to a
chain reaction and increase the risk. Finally, the urban pipeline
network is located in the heavily populated region, and hence
the risk assessment must take the effects of person intoxication
accident and evacuation into account.
Considering the above characteristics, risk assessment of
urban natural gas pipeline leakage is more complex than
traditional risk assessment of natural gas pipeline leakage. This
paper proposed a risk index assessment program for urban
natural gas pipeline leakage based on artificial neural network.
Utilizing the self-learning characteristic of artificial neural
network, this assessment program can extract the gas leakage
character from the monitoring data and generate the risk
parameters combining characteristics and influence introduced
by surrounding environment.
1261
 II. NEURAL NETWORK RISK ASSESSMENT INDEX SYSTEM
A. Risk Assessment Program Introduction
Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) method[5-6] is the data
processing model originated from the biological neural
network. It has powerful pattern recognition and data fitting
capacity to realize mapping functions from input to output by
self-studying, which makes ANN is fit for evaluating complex
problem. At the same time, artificial neural network can
automatically adjust the structure parameters, change the
mapping relationship and produce the corresponding expected
output with the specific input.
As described above, urban natural gas pipelines are
usually buried in the ground with the complex environment,
whose leakage process is difficult to describe precisely by a
theoretical model. Conversely, the pipeline leakage can be
predicted accurately with the historical data statistics. So, risk
assessment for urban natural gas pipeline leakage can be
abstracted as a pattern recognition problem. The pattern
recognition function of artificial neural network can not only
analyze the leakage of natural gas pipeline, but also describe
the risk level caused by the leakage through combining the
characteristics around urban natural gas pipeline (such as other
pipes, weather information and personnel gathering
information), thus providing a more accurate reference for
urban safety planners. Therefore, this paper adopts the artificial
neural network to assess the relevant risk caused by urban
natural gas pipeline leakage self and its chain reaction by
adopting the artificial neural network.
B. Parameters in Risk Index Assessment
Generally, neural network model in the network is
determined by building topology structure, input nodes, output
nodes and number of layers. It is well known that three layers
BP network can max approximation function after enough
learning. Therefore, we use three-layer structure of the BP
neural network to access pipeline leakage in this paper. We
choose 10 indexes such as methane concentration and distance
from ground standing for the input layer as the initialization
information; concentration field of gas diffusion, probability of
poisoning, probability of gas explosion and effect on other
pipelines stand for hidden layer. Risk index stands for output
layer.
Index Input Layer Value
1 Methane concentration Numeric
2 Distance from ground Numeric
3 Natural Gas Pressure in operation Numeric
4 Soil corrosion Logical
5 Pipeline status Logical
6 Temperature Numeric
7 Humidity Numeric
8 Wind speed Numeric
9 Ambient population density Numeric
10 Pipeline deployment distance Numeric
TABLE I. INPUT LAYER OF NEURAL NETWORK ASSESSMENT INDEX SYSTEM
Table 1. lists all The input layers of neural network risk
assessment index system. It is clearly shown that the values of
inputs are set to logical value or numeric value because of its
different meaning. Using logical type index and the numeric
index can actually simplify the calculation. For example, value
of pipeline status is a logical type, which namely means the
value of good pipeline is 1, otherwise the value is 0. This has
the advantages that values for complex evaluation index system
of risk index assessment of urban natural gas pipeline leakage,
by using the logical type, can greatly reduce the workload and
increase the credibility of evaluation results at the same time.
III. SIMULATION AND OPERATION RESULTS
A. Leakage risk index assessment instance
The data for leakage risk assessment is collected from the
pipeline network monitoring system in Hefei, and the detected
pipeline about 40 km long is deployed in Luyang district,
Hefei, along which there are some residential and commercial
buildings. The methane detector in the monitoring system can
detect methane concentrations range from 0% to 10% with up
to 0.5% in accuracy. While this system is able to get distance
of other pipelines and personnel information of building
around the natural gas pipeline. Under normal circumstances,
there are 100 thousand inhabitants or staff within 500 meters
of the pipeline.
B. Data collection
According to the current operation experience, if methane
concentration around gas pipeline is below 1%, gas pipeline
can be considered as normal operation; if concentration is
between 1% to 3%, the gas pipeline is leaking slightly; if
concentration more than 3%, the gas pipeline is leaking
seriously. Based on the above operation experience and related
GIS information, we collected several typical data in different
areas to learn and simulate, including:
1. Normal operation (fine pipe, damaged pipe)
2. Slight gas leakage (dense residential areas, open area)
3. Serious gas leakage (dense residential area, open area)
C. Neural Network Studying
As presented in the previous model, the hidden layer
contains the probability of poisoning. For the dense residential
buildings and crowded places, the probability of poisoning is
relatively high, so other factors are required to realize the
hidden layer. For the open areas with few buildings, the gas
concentration decreased significantly due to the proliferation,
hence the probability of poisoning is much low accordingly.
The training error of the algorithm can be significantly
reduced and stabilized by learning the typical case data
repeatedly (more than 30 times). In this case, the resulting
evaluation factor results are shown in Table 2. As illustrated in
the table, the risk index in the open areas is much smaller than
the index in the dense residential areas under the circumstance
of the same leakage volume, which is in line with the expected
value. It can be argued that the training has achieved the
expected goal.
1262
Index Condition Risk IndexD.E. (0-10)
1 Normal with new pipeline 0.122
2 Normal with old pipeline 0.126
3 Little Leaks in residential area 3.532
4 Little Leaks in open area 1.287
5 Leaks in residential area 7.832
6 Leaks in open area 3.028
TABLE II. AVERAGE RISK INDEX FOR URBAN PIPELINE LEAKAGE
IV. SYSTEM OPERATION AND RESULTS
We integrated risk index assessment for urban natural gas
pipeline leakage into the pipe network monitoring system in
Hefei. The detected pipeline is about 40 km long. The detector
can detect methane concentrations with the accuracy of 0.5%
and show the information about the surrounding pipeline and
corridor. In the 97-day trial run, a total of four gas leakage
events occurred which were successfully predicted and warned.
The relevant data and evaluation system demonstrates that:
1. Artificial neural network can accurately identify and
pre-warn the pipeline leakage events. Compared with the
traditional pipeline leakage detection based on the model, this
system has high recognition rate and low false alarm rate,
which can reflect indirectly the pattern recognition ability of
artificial neural network.
2. The risk assessment index produced by the system is
much similar to the index given by the experienced operator
through the systematic and manual comparison.
3. The system can monitor a wide range of urban gas
pipeline leakage in real time and provide the appropriate risk
assessment factors.
Figure 1. Interface of monitoring system
Figure 2. Historical curve and events analysis of monitoring system
V. CONCLUSION
This paper presents a risk index assessment system based
on the artificial neural network from the perspective of urban
natural gas pipeline leakage and protection. After 97-day trial
operation in the existing pipeline monitor network, the system
can analyze the pipeline leakage events in real time and
produce the relevant risk factors conforming to the actual
situation, which indicates the reliability and practicability of
the assessment program.
[1] QI A. Present development situation and problem analysis of oil and gas
pipeline in our country[J]. International Petroleum Economics,
2009,17(12):57-59
[2] Chen P, Mei H, Zhao H. Modeling and Analysis for the Big-hole
Leakage Rate of Gas Pipeline[J]. Journal of Graphics, 2014.
[3] Hu, L. Zhang, and W. Liang, “Detection of small leakage from long
transportation pipeline with complex noise,” Journal of Loss Prevention
in the Process Industries, vol. 24, no. 4, pp. 449–457, Jul. 2011.
[4] D. L. Ermak, S. T. Chan, D. L. Morgan, and L. K. Morris, “A
comparison of dense gas dispersion model simulations with burro series
LNG spill test results,” Journal of Hazardous Materials, vol. 6, no. 1, pp.
129–160, Jul. 1982.
[5] K. S. Narendra and K. Parthasarathy, “Identification and control of
dynamical systems using neural networks,” IEEE Transactions on
Neural Networks, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 4–27, Mar. 1990.
[6] K. S. Narendra and K. Parthasarathy, “Identification and control of
dynamical systems using neural networks,” IEEE Transactions on
Neural Networks, vol. 1, no. 1, pp. 4–27, Mar. 1990.
1263