Proactively Protecting Pipeline Infrastructure with Digital Agents

Digital agents embedded into new technologies can automate actions, either presenting information to human agents or taking autonomous action based on trained conditions, such as enabling a valve to close without human interaction when the appropriate conditions are presented.

There will always be a need for figuring out ways to extend the lifetime of infrastructure investments, and GTI Energy is looking at doing the same things more intelligently, exploring opportunities to use robotics, sensors, and scanning technologies.

GTI Energy has developed a lot of specific AI applications and technologies to address narrow problems. But researchers are also looking at integrating disparate technologies and systems to make them interoperable—applying the sensors and analytics that can assist in identifying risk to aging infrastructure and leak detection to other networks and systems.

Recent investments in AI have focused has been on machine learning and data science along with operations and maintenance—particularly for various technologies that relate to near-term methane emissions reduction. There is also a lot of interest in finding ways to merge energy systems with the digital world, combining broad energy system applications with digital tools to optimize solutions for greener energy.