Risk assessment of interstate pipelines using a fuzzy-clustering approach

Abstract

Interstate pipelines are the most efficient and feasible mean of transport for crude oil and gas within boarders. Assessing the risks of these pipelines is challenging despite the evolution of computational fuzzy inference systems (FIS). The computational intricacy increases with the dimensions of the system variables especially in the typical Takagi–Sugeno (T–S) fuzzy-model. Typically, the number of rules rises exponentially as the number of system variables increases and hence, it is unfeasible to specify the rules entirely for pipeline risk assessments. This work proposes the significance of indexing pipeline risk assessment approach that is integrated with subtractive clustering fuzzy logic to address the uncertainty of the real-world circumstances. Hypothetical data is used to setup the subtractive clustering fuzzy-model using the fundamental rules and scores of the pipeline risk assessment indexing method. An interstate crude-oil pipeline in Egypt is used as a case study to demonstrate the proposed approach.