PR-420-183903-R01 Pipeline Right-of-Way River Crossing Monitoring With Satellites

The goal of the work described herein is to provide PRCI and the pipeline industry further understanding of the current capabilities and limitations of combined SAR and high resolution optical satellite imagery for the monitoring of pipeline ROWs which span river crossings.

Four Areas of Interests (AOIs) with pipeline ROWs that span river crossings were selected for analysis: South Saskatchewan River, Saskatchewan, Canada operated by SaskEnergy Incorporated; Thompson Creek, Louisiana, USA operated by Colonial Pipeline Company; Gila River, Arizona, USA operated by Kinder Morgan Incorporated; and Humber Estuary, UK, operated by National Grid. For each AOI, monitoring requirements were defined by the operators.  Amplitude Change Detection (ACD) and Interferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar (InSAR) were performed for all AOIs; results correlated to the defined monitoring requirements are discussed.

A high level summary of the role of combined SAR and optical satellite operational monitoring of pipeline river crossings is listed below:

1. InSAR “Phase” used for (a) Subsidence (b) Slope Movement
2. SAR “Amplitude” used to both detect and classify (a) large scale Land Cover/Land Use Change (e.g. bridge construction), (b) flooding, (c) river channel changes, (d) river bed exposure, and (e) vessel traffic.
3. SAR “Amplitude” used to detect changes resulting from (a) small scale Land Cover/ Land Use (e.g. construction of individual buildings), and possibly (b) bank erosion and (c) pipeline exposure. Optical Satellite imagery is required for classification of these changes.