ARGIS
BY KATIE DECKER
The Augmented-Reality Solution That’s Saving the Energy Industry Time and Money Maintaining assets has always been timeconsuming and labour-intensive for the oil business. Whether these assets are underground pipelines or offshore rigs, the resources necessary to monitor them are significant. Whiting Petroleum Corporation is a major independent exploration and production company, controlling one of the largest acreage positions in the Bakken/Three Forks resources play in the Williston Basin of North Dakota and Montana. Whiting’s One Call department in Watford City, North Dakota, is responsible for identifying and protecting underground assets at thousands of well sites and other field locations. Accuracy in identifying hidden assets is critical to the company’s success, ensuring that excavators are drilling in the correct site to prevent costly errors and safety hazards. Argis Solutions uses augmented reality (AR) integrated with ArcGIS, a spatial analytics platform, to help Whiting Petroleum save time and millions of dollars and mitigate risk by enabling staff to visualise assets hidden underground. Field crews used to have to rely on static maps and a time-consuming, faulty process for locating and maintaining the company’s assets. On-site field crews would first use an electromagnetic locator or groundpenetrating radar to identify precisely where the assets were buried, marking them on the static map. The locators would then compile a report that would be given to One Call staff. In turn, the One Call department would create the documentation for the excavation crew. This inefficient process left too much room for error, as there was no way to confirm the locations of the assets being marked.
Oil field assets through Argis Solutions’ AR mobile
Argis Solutions’ cloud-based AR visualisation app, Argis Lens, easily interprets location data. Real-time, real-world renderings of geospatial or other types of data, such as building schematics and component diagrams, can be seen instantly through a mobile device. The app is userfriendly and puts the power of spatial analytics data into the hands of field crews and industry technicians. On-site, workers simply hold their device’s camera up to the area where they need to get information about pipelines or other assets, and Argis Lens gives them the most up-todate data via 3D enhancements to the dynamic image from ArcGIS Online or through ArcGIS Server. Working with Argis Lens, Whiting Petroleum damageprevention technicians could not only streamline their asset management process but also improve the accuracy of their data. Now, team members can go out into the field and see their data around them as if they were stepping into an ArcGIS map layer. They have an instant understanding of the location of their underground assets without needing to interpret or analyse the data any further. Once each asset is manually flagged on the ground, the app enables the team to confirm immediately if every asset is marked accurately. With Argis Lens, the One Call report simply requires taking a picture with a mobile device, eliminating manual error-prone work. The implementation of spatial analytics and the 3D relationships has enabled the Watford City crew to save an average of 30 minutes in locating each asset. So for a company that needs to locate many assets a year, this amounts to significant time and cost savings. This new process also reduces paperwork, eliminates time-consuming analysis, and provides a higher level of quality assurance. Damage-prevention technicians can now perform their operations more efficiently and effectively while maximising the company’s return on investment.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR Katie Decker, Community Manager, Esri Startup Program Esri | 520 Broadway, Suite 200 | Santa Monica, CA 90401 P: 909-793-2853 ext. 1-2040 E: KDecker@esri.com
visualisation app.
28 June 2018
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