tech guide | communications
Preparing For The Worst Calgary startup brings emergency response into the digital age
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wo days before Christmas 2003, as residents living near a remote gas field in southwest China were preparing for bed, a natural gas well blowout sent a cloud of toxic hydrogen sulphide-contaminated gas into the sky which, over the coming hours, would create a 25-square kilometre “death zone” that left more than 200 villagers dead and thousands more suffering chemical burns and respiratory distress. Though a rare event, the tragedy was a potent reminder of the dangers posed by oil and gas facilities in regions, like Western Canada, thick with energy infrastructure. Around Calgary alone are more than 2,000 sour gas wells. One way to alleviate fears of well blowouts, gas processing plant leaks, pipeline failures, or refinery or upgrader explosions is to ensure all possible measures have been taken to alert residents as early as possible. While the hazards cannot be eliminated entirely, oil companies can go a long way toward maintaining good relations among rural residents — and perhaps saving lives — by having an effective and credible plan in place to deal with such emergencies, says one Calgary company.
“It became evident fairly quickly that there was no effective way of notifying a lot of residents and businesses in a hurry….” Cell Bridge Communications Corp. recently launched a hightech solution that brings emergency response into the modern communications era. Its secure, web-based emergency notification GIS (geographic information system) application, known as GeoAlert, automates a process that’s still handled, in some cases, manually through binders and call-out lists. In addition to streamlining and speeding up the process, it creates a digital audit trail, serves as an internal communications and training platform, and has the potential to eliminate duplication among oil companies with overlapping jurisdictions. “It became evident fairly quickly that there was no effective way of notifying a lot of residents and businesses in a hurry, in the event of an H2S or any other emergency incident. In an H2S gas situation, you may have a maximum 15 minutes,” Dan Pacholik, VP-Operations, says of Cell Bridge’s decision to develop a system specific to the oil and gas industry. The system allows companies to program emergency zones based on precise geographical co-ordinates and to use the
Moving Target In the event of a gas leak, GeoAlert can adjust its Protective Action Zone to follow the movement of the dispersal plume based on inputs such as weather reports.
system as a dashboard to proactively manage emergency response. The ability to visually monitor an emergency situation as it unfolds — to follow the movement of a plume of toxic gas, for instance, to track emergency response vehicles on the ground and to know at a glance in real-time which residents have and have not acknowledged notification — sets it apart from the paper and phone bank systems of the past. Once an area of interest is identified, GeoAlert — capable of dialing thousands of numbers every 15 minutes — automatically calls all affected residents on a pre-set priority basis. Companies can tailor specific pre-recorded messages to specific emergency zones. In order to ensure residents have received and understood a message — and that it was not, for instance, received by an answering machine — they are required to acknowledge by pressing a specified digit on their phone. A preset menu of options may allow them to indicate other responses, such as whether they need evacuation assistance or are planning to go to a preset shelter location. Cell Bridge invested heavily in 3D terrain mapping, dispersion modelling, facility and resident information databases, servers, telecom switching networks and bandwidth to create GeoAlert, Pacholik says. Its most visually striking feature is its 3D satellite mapping technology which, when an emergency like a gas leak occurs, can display the spreading plume as a purple-coloured “initial isolation zone” laid over designated emergency planning zones, moving in real-time while automatically identifying who should be notified and when. Numerous other details can be simultaneously displayed, such as residences, schools and businesses, oilfield facilities and pipelines, and any company vehicles in the area equipped with GPS. “I can now determine where my resources are, what responses I received from each resident, what actions I should be taking, where to send my rovers, where to put up roadblocks — all those things can now be monitored or deployed on the maps,” says Pacholik. By Maurice Smith