Leah Bennett

Research Paper

Energy Flow Mapping in Washington State

-PipelinesIntroductionWhile many may not notice it, energy is all around us. From our body systems, to giant
tankers in the ocean, and a wood stove burning, energy is essential to all daily life. Today the
problem of anthropogenic climate change is on the forefront of everyones minds and the
consumption of fossil fuels is one of the main contributors to greenhouse gas emissions. One
aspect that may lead to changes in energy consumption is first learning about how fossil fuels are
transported and stored. Pipelines are just one of the many transportation methods of fossil fuels
and a major cause for debate currently. With the Keystone XL Pipeline working its way through
the government channels, the safety and risk of pipelines is a question on many peoples minds.
Whether it be from accidents, leakings or explosions, people want to know that they are safe.
For my project I will be working with Dr. Thomas Webler and his Energy Transitions
Research Lab. The main focus is to apply social science research to promote in-depth
understandings into the human dimensions of energy transitions (Webler, 2015). My focus will
be on pipelines, how they are transporting oil, natural gas and hazardous materials into, across,
and out of Washington State, in some parts focusing on Whatcom County. I will be looking at
the effects of these pipelines on people and the land. To do this, I will incorporate census data to
see how many people there are, and in what age ranges would be affected if something were to
go wrong with Washington pipelines. In addition, Ill be looking at where extra vulnerable sites
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may be, such as hospitals and schools. To complement this, I will also be looking at land use
data for Washington to see what kinds of land the pipelines are underneath and if any run under
areas of extreme sensitivity. Such as wildlife preserves, wetlands, or other fragile areas.

Literature ReviewThere has been much literature written about pipeline vulnerability, with most of them
focusing on natural disasters affecting pipelines. Manshoori 2011 looked at how seismic
vulnerability affected the stability of pipelines and presented a review of previous important
earthquakes and consequent damages, reasons for specific concern about pipelines (Manshoori,
2011). The damages associated with earthquakes on pipelines can consist of wave propagation
(energy transmissions), permeant ground displacements, faulting, liquefaction, landslide, and
uplift. Many past earthquakes have greatly damaged and destroyed pipelines. Such as the 1994
Northridge earthquake in San Fernando Valley that caused large areas of soil erosion, and craters
to form. There are also many ways that pipelines can fail when confronted with large amounts of
seismic activity; the stiffness of the pipeline could be moved, attachments could break off, and
supports could fail. Overall, the research by Manshoori found that pipelines are more sensitive
to velocity and displacement rather than acceleration and utilizing flexible joints and supports
can reduce the damage caused by earthquakes.
Continuing to look at the effects of the Northridge Earthquake, Lindell and Perry looked
at the specific effects of the hazardous materials released from the seismic activity. They found
that hazardous material releases during earthquakes occur at a rate 100 times higher than other
natural disasters. The earthquake cases 134 locations to have hazmat problems, 9 of them being

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at schools. Even though the pipelines were shut down one minute after the earthquake, the
remaining pressure caused many pipelines to rupture and spill 230,000 gallons of petroleum.
Natural gas pipes in the area also sustained 752 breaks, many of them resulting in fires. The
researchers found that pipeline risk assessment is easier because they save simple and uniform
designs but differ in failure rates. Also, that this disaster emphasize the importance oil spills in
urban and environmentally sensitive areas (Lindell, 1997). Because a majority of the ruptures
were also related to corrosion, they state that the quality of pipeline maintenance programs in
estimating failure probabilities (Lindell, 1997) be updated.
Honeggar 1994, looked at gas pipelines vulnerability to lateral spread hazards. The
objective of risk assessment was to identify features of the BC Gas pipeline system that had a
potential long term disruption of gas supply (Honeggar, 1994). To assess the likelihood of
catastrophic pipeline damage, the capacity of the pipelines to withstand ground distortions was
compared with the estimated rate of these motions. While the Lower Mainland Region of British
Columbia does not usually have very large earthquakes, the researchers were more concerned
with the long shaking duration time that may occur with smaller earthquakes. The criteria they
used to evaluate the risk was slope, pipeline alignments, number of connections and shape of
pipeline, and earthquake hazard. Honeggar also took into consideration the pipe wall thickness
and pipe radius. The results led the pipelines to be identified on a basis of specific vulnerabilities
and this can then be used to allocate resources for improvements and further pipeline planning.
More closely related to my project is Taos work on using lidar an imaging technology
for pipeline mapping and pipeline safety. The researcher states that high-quality location maps
are vital for safety reasons and in order to monitor any ground movement around the pipelines
(Tao, 2002), and thus sees using lidar as a good source. Excavation damage is one of the biggest
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causes of pipeline failures and lidar can be an alternative to this. Using DEMs of the area the
researchers looked at the slope, aspect, and curvature to define the terrain of the area. This in
combination with the lidar produced many derivatives some including segments that have a high
risk factor. They can also be used to produce orthoimages which help when measuring a
locations of pipelines. Overall, the researchers found that airborne lidar has great potential in
assisting pipeline risk management and mitigating the hazards (Tao, 2002) and should be used
to solve safety problems and make decisions concerning pipelines.
Finally, in 2007 Yildirim et al. presented at the ESRI International User Conference on
how pipeline routes can be selected by ArcGIS. A least cost pathway was selected in Turkey
while taking into consideration, environmental, social, economic, and safety criteria. A pipeline
geodatabase was started with that included land use, elevation, buildings, culture, and costs. This
was then classified into a raster calculator with a distance surface creating station points that
connected to create an optimum route. The result was a 37.7 km long route that did not cross any
fauna, landslides or protected areas. In the end they state that raster based GIS is an effective
route to use to produce accurate maps of pipelines and can be used to effectively find optimum
routes to minimize environmental impacts.
Taken as a whole, pipelines can be a vulnerable infrastructure when it comes to natural
disasters, therefore finding an easy and non-invasive way to check for risks, vulnerability and
overall mapping purposes is a key in pipeline safety. A great deal of literature has been written
on how GIS and its tools can be used to create vulnerability reports and map both underground
and above ground pipelines. They show that it is an effective way to plan effective pipeline
routes that can take into account multiple criteria.

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Proposed Methods/Preliminary ResultsThe first step of my project will be to do a lot of research. While I do know some about
pipelines, more detailed information will have to be found. First will be finding all of the
pipelines that run through Washington and what they carry. Also, how old they are, what size
they are and where they are connected to other pipelines. More questions to be answered are
what types of disasters can befall pipelines, how much area each disaster will effect. My analysis
will then consist of making buffers around the pipelines depending on the above characteristics.
This buffer will then be joined to the census and land use data. Once this is done a risk index and
vulnerability index will be run to see how different areas in Washington are at risk.
A preliminary search for GIS pipeline data has been so far unsuccessful. While there are
many maps that show both United States and Washington Pipelines, I have yet to find a GIS free
dataset of pipelines. Pipelines are considered a section of national security, therefore while there
are maps of them, data about them is scarcer. An easy way around this, and what I have done in
Figure One, is to digitize multiple maps to create my own pipeline data set and create attributes
for each of them from my research. I have found detailed maps from the Energy Information
Administration and the National Public Mapping System. Figure one shows that Washington has
pipelines running through it from north-south and also west-east along the Columbia. They
connect to Canada and also Idaho. Figure one is only showing natural gas pipelines, which are
the most abundant kind in Washington and only ones that are interstate, meaning they cross one
or more states. Washington does not have any intrastate pipelines, which do not cross any state
borders. This map and others in the scale of Washington may be hard to preform detailed
analysis on because the data is very coarse and not very detailed. That is why I will also focus on
Whatcom county and Bellingham. I have found more detailed maps of Whatcom County land
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use and pipelines. These will be easier and be able to give better details when joined with the
census data.

Figure 1- This map shows all of the natural gas pipelines in Washington State. It was digitized
off of a country wide map from the Energy Information Administration. The pipelines shown are
only interstate which means that they cross one or more states; in this case they cross the
Canadian and Idaho borders.

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Figure 2- The above map shows all of the pipelines that are in Whatcom County. They are
categorized by either transporting gas or hazardous liquids. The Cherry Point Refinery is also
shown, as it is the biggest refinery in Washington. While it began as an ARCO corporation it is
now under the operations of BP (British Petroleum).

ConclusionOverall, I will be looking at how pipelines function across the state of Washington. The
results that I will receive will shows how energy enters and exits the state and what areas they
will affect. Looking at both the people and the land pipelines run under will be able to give a
better understanding of who will be at risk if any disaster, small or large were to occur. This
research is important because it can help people know what energy is being transferred in
pipelines and who may be affected by it. Further research can occur to look at more of the
structural integrity of pipelines and mapping them in consensus with census data and land use
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data across the United States. This could also be done with proposed pipelines that may begin
construction in the near future. With pipelines becoming top headlines these days, it is important
for the public to become informed on their safely, routes, and the range of people and earth they
affect. My objective is to make these clearer to the public and present the information in an
engaging way.

Works Cited-

Webler, Tomas. Energy Transitions Research Lab. http://www.energytrans.org/

Lindell, Michael K., and Ronald W. Perry. "Hazardous materials releases in the Northridge
earthquake: implications for seismic risk assessment." Risk Analysis 17.2 (1997): 147156.
Manshoori, Mohammad Reza. "Evaluation of seismic vulnerability and failure modes for
pipelines." Procedia Engineering 14 (2011): 3042-3049.
Honegger, Douglas G. "Assessing vulnerability of BC Gas pipelines to lateral spread
hazards." Proceedings of the Fifth US-Japan Workshop on Earthquake Resistant Design
of Lifeline Facilities and Countermeasures Against Soil Liquefaction, Technical Report
NCEER-94-0026, National Center for Earthquake Engineering Research, State University
of New York, Buffalo, New York. 1994.
Tao, C. Vincent, and Yong Hu. "Assessment of airborne Lidar and imaging technology for
pipeline mapping and safety applications." Integrated remote sensing at the global,
regional and local scale, ISPRS commission I mid-term symposium in conjunction with
Pecora 15/land satellite information IV conference proceedings. 2002.
Yildrim, Volkan. GIS Based Pipeline Route Selection By ArcGIS in Turkey. Twenty-Seventh
Annual ESRI Intern Seventh Annual ESRI International User Conference
http://proceedings.esri.com/library/userconf/proc07/papers/papers/pap_2015.pdf

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