The IDS project - Intelligent Data Sets

Frontiers of Knowledge and Technology

The Norwegian oil and gas industry today is at a turning point. A recent report (“Integrated Work Processes: Future work processes on the Norwegian Continental Shelf”, Autumn 2005) issued by Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF) stresses that to achieve commercial benefits and high-level ambitions of IO, significant changes are necessary to existing work processes. This poses a challenge to the industry. It is believed that Integrated Work Processes (IWP) most likely will be implemented in two stages, first through implementation of Generation 1 (G1) processes, then by Generation 2 (G2) processes.



Figure 1. From Conventional work processes to Integrated work processes (view figure)

To move from G-1 to G-2, conventional work processes require major re-engineering efforts. The report highlights the immediate need for innovative R&D based solutions to improve existing work processes, and to optimize work process-to-work process (W2W) communication through seamless integration.

The information on data sheets is often reused by others than the author or the application that developed the data sheet. For effective reuse of information across applications and work processes, the data contained in data sheets therefore needs to be made independent of the data sheet itself while respecting the owner, role, status, revision, etc. of the information. In order to reuse data and information across data sheet formats and applications, the following needs to be addressed:

• Data modelling (scoping/bounding/mapping) includes making implicit information explicit.
• Data editing (revision/version/effectiveness)
• Data exchange (between parties), including transmission
• Data sharing (between applications), including configuration management
• Data integration (aggregation/consolidation)
• Business process workflow modelling, including relationship to involved product models.
• Business processes integration and work process optimisation
• Transmittal management (document control)
• Establish test and validation methods including a test environment to ensure trusted
   exchange of data across project participants during design, fabrication and operations.

Integrated Operations is facilitated by collaborative work teams from different organizations and/or disciplines exchanging or sharing the same data. A product model with common semantic meaning of terms and definitions facilitates such collaborative work processes.

Over the years the industry has developed a variety of international standards and ad hoc solutions for exchange. These standards tend to be focussed on formats for exchange between proprietary applications within a single discipline or focussed on application types, not on the ontological/semantic meaning of data. Project experience has shown that 90% of the cost related to data handover is tied to the meaning of data, not the format. A challenge is therefore to include explicit and implicit ontology information elements from data sheets in product models. This will be done by representing the ontology in these product models using ISO 15926. By using this ISO standard as the basis for developing interfaces between applications, information exchange can take place between applications and organizations that use similar data independent of format and without loss of meaning. This helps to optimise work processes in a highly collaborative environment both within and between organizations.

ISO 15926 is gaining increasing use in the oil and gas industry. Petoro defined their daily production reporting requirements for all Norwegian oil and gas operators using ISO 15926. Furthermore, British Petroleum, ChevronTexaco, Shell and Statoil are using this daily production report developed in ISO 15926 as the basis for defining production ontologies in their Houston based PRODML project.

ISO 15926 defines a generic and conceptual data model that is independent of any particular industry and application, and a Reference Data Library (RDL) that extends the data model to include the specific needs of any industry or application. The conceptual model defines the rules for describing ‘things’ and basic semantics, while the Reference Data (RD) extends the semantics into specific industries or business areas by establishing the set of terminology that is used to describe a particular type of objects.

Where industries are using same types of objects, e.g. pipes, cables, steel profiles etc., RD can be reused across industries. Whenever a term is used across industries/disciplines, but with different meanings the process of establishing the RD ensures unambiguous terminology. This is required both for unambiguous exchange of data and for integration of data for an actual project. A consequence of this approach is that data is defined independent of applications. This approach therefore also supports the introduction of new highly collaborative work processes in a 24/7 online real-time operational environment through business process reengineering.

To ensure that the data necessary for a particular type of objects or subject area is covered, Product Models (PM) based on Reference Data are established for the relevant types of products. These PM’s can be seen as templates for the types or groups of data required for the actual type of product. The intention is that these PM’s shall describe all data required for a type of product for any user or application requirements, i.e. record what is known about a type of product. If additional applications need to be supported, the actual PM’s could be extended by adding the additional RD required to fully supporting the requirements of the additional application. This results in integrating the data needs for the new application with the data needs that have already been defined for existing applications. PM’s may be defined for types of mechanical products, systems, documents, reservoirs, organizations and activities.

To support the internationalization of the PM’s a test facility is planned. The test facility shall be able to maintain and manage RD and PM’s. This includes browsing and editing RD. The test facility shall also be able to support ISO standardization work of ISO 15926. There currently exists no such test facility and there is international interest to develop such a test facility.


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