The development of an accurate pipeline centerline is very important to any Pipeline Integrity Program. This centerline becomes the basis by which pipeline integrity data is correlated to various spatial data such as high population areas, commercially navigable waterways, sensitive drinking water zones, sensitive ecological areas, earthquake zones, flood zones, and landslide zones. The correlation of this data is then used to prepare informed risk assessments.

The National Pipeline Mapping System (NPMS) has established voluntary standards on the capture of data and meta data. Although this is a still a voluntary program, the recently issued Integrity Rule by the Office of Pipeline Safety make it an increasingly important part of any ongoing Integrity Management Program.

Gulf Interstate Engineering can provide the necessary services to acquire key GPS (Global Positioning System) coordinates along your pipeline system to establish a pipeline centerline. GPS coordinates are obtained in latitude and longitude at known points along the pipeline system such as road crossings. We then utilize the existing pipeline survey to establish a centerline between the known points. This method is typically the most cost effective means of establishing an initial pipeline centerline for risk assessments.

Gulf Interstate Engineering provides the following GPS acquisition services:

• Develop consistent data structure for acquisition
• Provide GPS data acquisition crews and equipment
• Provide post processing of data as needed
• Submit pipeline centerline data to NPMS
• Export pipeline centerline data to a mapping or GIS system