Page 142: of Offshore Engineer Magazine (Aug/Sep 2014)

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All eyes on deck

Ellen Fussell Policastro examines how video surveillance meets DCS integration for faster event response.

he US Energy Information Administration names DETAILED PROJECT PICTURE

T

Angola as the second-largest oil producer in Sub- An IP camera is a digital video camera that can send

Saharan Africa. When an international oil and gas con- and receive data via a network and the internet. The glomerate in Angola became concerned about security Angola project required 232 IP video cameras linked on a foating production storage and offoading unit to heat sensors at each workstation. With the trigger of (FPSO), operations managers responded by asking to in- a heat sensor came an alarm and recorded video with crease visibility to the operation — a costly move in such time-stamping mechanisms. a remote location. The unit operators needed to keep an Operators can view an event remotely, even days eye on their safety system, especially fame monitoring, after, because the system logs and stores event infor- as well as the workstation onboard the FPSO. mation. They can also search for event information in

In response, an industrial ethernet provider for the oil a central database and play it back for details about and gas industry teamed-up with a control and instru- what triggered the event. “This gives the user not only mentation systems provider to implement the critical a way to view in real time exactly what is happening process control system for the platform. Using a video in the feld, but a way to take corrective action from encoder, the system migrated from analog closed-circuit the control room, or immediately send the proper team television (CCTV) to internet protocol (IP) networks. to respond,” said Thomas Nuth, manager for global oil

This allowed seamless integration of the process control and gas systems at Moxa, Inc., in Brea, California.

systems and IP video systems, giving the FPSO alarm- The video recording function for the control system to-video monitoring. provider’s video management system offered histori-

The good news is operators can now see more and cal playback and search of events that triggered the respond faster to potential safety and security events. system. “We make use of the video encoder to convert

The bad news is distributed control system (DCS) the video analog signal to TCP/IP,” says Francis Goh, integration could bring more potential for cyber of Yokogawa Electric International, in Singapore. security threats.

“Detectors are also segregated in zones,” he says, “and oedigital.com 144

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