Reducing risks to communities and employees:
Why Digital transformation in asset inspection is now needed more than ever
On November 8th around 6:30 am, with the winds whipping, an aged and rusted hook broke on the Caribou-Palermo line, sparking a fire that would eventually last 17 days, consume 153,000 acres, and kill 85 people. The fire at its peak was moving at a rate of 60 football fields per minute. After review, it was determined that the tower where the fire started was not easily accessible, with the nearest inspected tower almost 7 miles away. Putting 5,000 first responders at risk could have been avoided with modern visual inspection tools. The technology available today to inspect, analyze, and remediate the equipment and vegetation could have mitigated, if not outright prevented a catastrophe.
The U.S. electricity system is a critical infrastructure that supports human well-being, economic growth, and national security. Comprised of four core components ̶ generation, transmission, distribution, and end use, the electricity system has multiple vulnerabilities to both natural and human risks. According to a 2016 report produced by The Department of Energy, Resilience of the U.S. Electricity System, the U.S. electricity system is among the most robust and resilient in the world.
Nevertheless, a number of threat scenarios continue to pose risk management challenges. Adequately anticipating and responding to high impact, low frequency (HILF) risks is inherently difficult because they are, by definition, both rare and significant in scale. At the heart of these challenges is digital transformation in the inspection process.
You have a brain and mind of your own, use it, and reach your own decisions.
Globally, there is a movement to transform the Asset Inspection process allowing the humans responsible for the outcomes to use their creativity, critical thinking and judgement to solve problems and spend less time and energy reviewing the inspection data. The objective is to meet that challenge and provide the companies responsible for the inspections with solutions that allow them to focus on the issues and resolution, versus the human need to review all of the content.
With the growth of new technologies such as IoT sensors, commercial drones, robotics and cameras that can detect vegetation, heat and gas, the people responsible for the inspections now have available the unique tools to increase the speed and quality of the inspection process, while making it safer for both the inspectors, and the communities that could be at risk.
Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species