Introduction
Communities and industries worldwide require safe and reliable means to transport resources and waste products. Pipelines are a common transportation mechanism for such products, which include liquids, gases, and slurries. As the terrain traversed by pipelines can be subject to natural earth processes, such as landslides, flooding, and seismicity, pipeline operators are constantly assessing how new tools can help them better understand these processes to support proactive management of the associated risks.
Background
The Western Canada Sedimentary Basin (WCSB) is a deep sedimentary basin, abundant with both water and energy resources, and a primary source of energy resources for the North American market. There are over 400,000 km of active pipelines that traverse this region, many of which cross landslide-prone terrain. In this type of terrain, a landslide is encountered every 10 km of pipeline, on average, and every 4 km of pipeline in areas with the highest density of landslides.
Solution
Although geo-professionals understand that longer-term infiltration of moisture into the ground may be linked with increases in the rate of deep-seated landslide movement, attempts to correlate deep-seated landslide activity with precipitation alone at regional scale have been met with limited success. BGC Engineering anticipated that incorporation of soil moisture data, in addition to precipitation, would result in better forecasts.
Conclusion
By integrating the ERA-5 Land data, infrastructure operators in Western Canada are now able to track and anticipate hydroclimatic trends that have been demonstrated to drive changes in landslide behavior. This knowledge can support infrastructure owners in making important operational decisions, such as where and when to most effectively allocate resources to manage the impacts of landslide hazards on their systems.
Source / Reference
Source: EU Copernicus