Abstract
The design of a natural gas pipeline route is a very important stage in Natural Gas Transmission Pipeline projects. It is a very complicated process requiring many different criteria for various areas to be evaluated simultaneously. These criteria include geographical, social, economic, and environmental aspects with their obstacles. In the classical approach, the optimum route design is usually determined manually with gathering the spatial references for suitable places and obstructions from the ground. This traditional method is not effective because it does not consider all the factors that affect the route of the pipeline. Today, the powerful tools incorporated in Geographical Information Systems (GIS) can be used to automatically determine the optimum route. An automatic pipeline route finder algorithm can calculate the best convenient route avoiding geographic and topological obstructs and selecting suitable places depending on their weights. In this study, an automatic natural gas pipeline design study was carried out in the east western region of Turkey. At the end of the study, an automatic natural gas pipeline route was determined using GIS and a least cost path algorithm, and an alternative study was conducted using a traditional method. In addition, a cartographic line simplification process with a point removal algorithm was used to eliminate the high vertex points and a simplified route was determined. The results were compared with the results of a finished Muş natural gas project constructed by The Turkish Petroleum Pipeline Corporation (BOTAŞ) and the negative and positive effects were evaluated. It was concluded that the use of GIS capabilities and the lowest cost path distance algorithm resulted in a 20% reduction of the cost through the simplification.
Highlights
The construction of natural gas pipelines is an important step for satisfying the energy demand in Turkey and all over the world
Appropriate regions and obstacles are identified from 1/25,000 scale maps and official correspondence with government agencies
The weights of the appropriate zones and restricted areas can be determined by ranking, and a pairwise comparison using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method
Summary
The construction of natural gas pipelines is an important step for satisfying the energy demand in Turkey and all over the world. The necessary data/criteria belonging to different fields of expertise are provided by government departments and include elements, such as highways, rivers, military zones, natural sources, and any obstacles During this process, a huge amount of data must be examined and analyzed together with many criteria concerning every aspect of the project route [1,2,3]. A huge amount of data must be examined and analyzed together with many criteria concerning every aspect of the project route [1,2,3] Putting all these components together to create a three-dimensional optimum route is a very complex and difficult phase in terms of labor, time, construction, and engineering problems [4]. All project data were compiled, and raster and vector data sets were converted into spatial data layers, such as appropriate areas, restricted areas, and geological map
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