Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assessment for Short Range Monitoring Gas Pipeline Using AHP Methodology

Oil and gas transmission pipelines require monitoring for maintenance and safety to prevent equipment failure and accidents. Over the last few years low-cost micro and mini Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) technology is emerging as an opportunity to supplement current monitoring systems. Small UAV technological solutions are flexible and adaptable and with a demonstrated capacity to obtain valuable data at small to medium spatial scales. Notwithstanding difficulties encountered in the generalization of use for civilian applications, small UAVs have demonstrated, through research and operational cases, the capacity to support the inspection and monitoring of oil and gas pipelines. Therefore, to fulfill monitoring pipelines demand, this study applies the multi- criteria decision making (MCDM) method to determine the importance weights of evaluation criteria and to synthesize the ratings of four candidate vehicles. Gathered the evaluators’ attitude in order for preference; then AHP is employed to obtain a crisp overall performance value for each alternative to make the final decision. It starts by describing reciprocal comparison matrix of seven criteria. Then, it deals with the components of the research methodology and the aggregated data itself. As a final result the airship, despite the high primary cost, has been chosen with the higher weight in overall.

Civil Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Assessment for Short Range Monitoring Gas Pipeline Using AHP Methodology Keywords:

pipeline monitoring-AHP methodology-MCDM-UAV