IP video technology is providing end-to-end surveillance for one of the world’s largest integrated oil and gas projects.
Sakhalin-2 was built from scratch in the harsh sub-arctic environment of Sakhalin Island in the Russian Far East. Phase 1 involved oil production from an offshore platform installed at the Piltun-Astokhskoye field in 1999. Phase 2 included the installation of two further platforms, 300 km of offshore pipelines connecting all three platforms to the shore, more than 800 km of onshore oil and gas pipelines, an onshore processing facility, an oil export terminal and the construction of Russia’s first liquefied natural gas plant. Sakhalin-2 has standardised on IndigoVision’s solution, with 600+ cameras providing remote monitoring for the entire infrastructure in what is believed to be the world’s largest wide-area IP Video surveillance system.
Sakhalin-2 creates a demanding security environment with the need to protect its vast operation against a range of possible threats. The challenge was to build a reliable, fault-tolerant surveillance system that delivers high-quality live and recorded video over huge distances. The project initially installed first generation IP Video systems, which suffered from unstable operation, lost frames and capacity problems. In contrast IndigoVision’s solution offered a distributed server-less architecture that had no single point of failure, limitless expansion capability, guaranteed no-dropped frames and class-leading compression that significantly reduced network load. Cameras, Network Video Recorders (NVRs) and workstations running ‘Control Center’, IndigoVision’s Video Management software, could be located at any point on the network, providing the flexibility and scalability needed for a project of this scale.
All of the original 350-plus cameras from the first generation IP system were reused by connecting them to IndigoVision encoders. An extra 250 IndigoVision IP cameras have also been connected to the network. More than 50 NVRs have been installed locally near clusters of cameras to reduce network loading. Multiple ‘Control Center’ workstations in 15 regional monitoring centres allow operators to monitor the operation. An operator with the correct permissions can view live or recorded video from any of the 600-plus cameras on the system, no matter where they are. IndigoVision’s compression ensures the UK firm says minimum latency, an important factor when streaming video over 800km.
IndigoVision’s IP alarm panels are used extensively, to interface to remote hardware alarms from process systems and ancillary equipment. These are then monitored using the alarm handling capability of ‘Control Center’, automatically alerting operators to potential operational and security problems. Each IP alarm panel has 32 opto-isolated binary inputs and eight relay outputs.
Sakalin-2 uses real-time analytics running in IndigoVision’s encoders and IP cameras to automatically alert operators to potential problems. Functions such as virtual tripwire will automatically trigger an alarm if a person or vehicle enters a restricted area. With so many cameras to monitor, real-time analytics can play a role in helping to improve operator efficiency and incident response.
Activity Controlled Framerate (ACF) is another motion-based real-time analytic that has helped reduced the overall network traffic and storage requirement by up to 50%, having a major impact on the performance of the system. ACF controls the framerate of the camera video stream based on the amount of motion in the scene. When there is no activity, video is streamed over the network at minimum framerate; the instant motion is detected the video is automatically transmitted at the maximum configured framerate.
The improved remote surveillance capability has allowed the security of 104 important Block Valve Stations (BVS) to be monitored from a central location as well as local satellite control rooms. This completely replaces the manned guarding operation at each BVS that was necessary with the old system, significantly reducing travel and staffing costs.
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