Drones have been making headlines all over the world for all of the wrong reasons over the last year. From disrupting flights at London’s Gatwick airport, to attacking oil facilities in the Middle East, these technical innovations are being used for more than just aerial photography. But what exactly is a drone? Do they pose a danger, or can their use be beneficial? A drone is a remotely controlled unmanned aircraft, but the term drone is typically used to describe a small remotely controlled aircraft with multiple propellers that is capable of hovering and, usually, taking photographs and video. Consumer drones can have an operating range of as much as 8 km with the capability to provide a continuous live video stream back to the operator, even at maximum range.
These capabilities in terms of range, flight time and payload (currently in the form of a camera) mean that drones can be put to work performing a number of tasks including those that are beneficial for Operational Risk Management.
Arial surveys Drones can be used to survey large areas from the sky relatively quickly and cheaply. For example, surveys of cross-country power transmission lines can be performed using drones. Some inspection companies have started using artificial intelligence to analyze the results of the surveys to identify defects such as vegetation impingement, rusting bolts, bird’s nests, missing tower parts, etc. If fitted with infra-red sensitive cameras, drones could also undertake thermographic surveys of the connections and insulators to help identify faults; the benefits are the elimination of low-level manned helicopter flights and a reduced number of workers in the field with both cost and safety implications. Surveys can also be completed faster with less manpower. The reduced costs allow surveys to be performed more often which could result in earlier detection of faults and an increase in the reliability of the power transmission network.
Pipelines As well as surveying power lines, drones can be tasked to overfly pipeline routes as part of the required monitoring of the right-of-way, with very similar benefits. The utility of using drones to monitor pipelines continues offshore, with submarine oil or gas releases being much more visible from the air than from the surface. Again, the benefits of using drones over manned helicopter or fixed-wing flights are cost savings, a reduced impact on the environment and reduced risks to personnel with the elimination of low-level over-water flights.
Oil spills Continuing the offshore theme, there are multiple applications for drones to reduce costs, downtime and response times. Drones have recently been successfully used in oil spill response exercises. Recently they were used to provide surveillance and reconnaissance of the oil spill to determine the location and extent of the spill. The information that they provided was used to help direct surface response vessels and to coordinate the clean-up vessel and the boom-handling vessel to maximize containment and capture of the spill. It was found to be safer, faster and cheaper than manned flight operations using helicopters or fixed-wing planes.
Inspections Drones can also be used to reduce reliance on high-risk and high-cost rope access work such as underdeck and over-the-side inspections. This can help reduce the pressure on offshore bed space with fewer people required offshore to complete the tasks. Flare boom inspections can be carried out during operations without the need to make the flare safe for a human inspector, and internal tanks can be inspected without having to arrange scaffolding or rope access, speeding up turnaround time to minimize downtime. Two operators can conduct UAV operations for up to ten hours each day, landing the drone only to replace batteries, and multiple drones can be operated simultaneously without cross-interference. As mentioned earlier, drones are not limited to purely visual inspections. In the power transmission example above, a drone with an infrared sensitive camera was used to undertake a thermographic survey. Some companies have taken drone-based inspections a step further and installed ultrasonic thickness measurement instrumentation on drones.
Storage tanks One application which is well suited to drone inspection is the inspection of storage tanks. Once a tank has been cleaned and is made safe for entry, the drone inspection team can quickly start taking wall thickness measurements off a pre-defined grid, with results streamed directly back to the operator for recording and interpretation without the need for scaffolding or rope access. The drone simply works up and down the sidewall of the tank, pausing only long enough for the thickness measurement to be taken. This allows a large number of thickness measurements to be taken up and down the walls of the tanks very quickly, reducing waiting time and eliminating the risks associated with working at heights.
Difficult to reach places Drones can also carry out inspections at a height that might normally need scaffolding or in difficult to reach places like pipe racks. They can even be used in non-explosive oxygen-deficient atmospheres before someone without breathing apparatus can enter. This allows an increased opportunity for inspections to be performed rather than be deferred due to lack of availability or resources.
Ground security patrols Another possible application is using drones to supplement ground security patrols. The UK Border Force has been using drones to provide a live video feed of the waiting and assembly areas at sites such as the Eurotunnel for several years and the UK Police forces routinely use them for monitoring crowds. Drones can also be tasked to flying set routes defined by waypoints, all the time recording and relaying a live video stream back to the operator. This functionality allows drones to become part of the perimeter control and monitoring system at sites such as refineries or petrochemical facilities, supplementing the routine manned patrols or performing spot checks. This could increase the monitoring frequency of a location or allow the security team to get a visual appraisal of an area much more quickly than by sending a manned response. Evidence suggests that the adoption of drones at operating sites has been slow, meaning that there are significant opportunities for further penetration for this technology with the associated benefits.
So far we have seen that there are a huge number of potential applications in process industries such as energy where drones can reduce risks, save time and deliver cost savings. But what are some of the downsides of drone technology advancements, and how can they be combated?
Weaponization of consumer drones The weaponization of consumer drones has been widely publicized following some fairly dramatic attacks with targets ranging from Heads of State to critical infrastructure such as oil processing facilities. Consumer drones have been taken up by armed groups and modified to carry high explosives. Recent attacks have started using multiple drones simultaneously and have had a significant impact. In September 2019 the oil processing facility at Abqaiq in Saudi Arabia was attacked with 10+ drones which caused damage to oil storage tanks and process trains1. Drones have been fitted with a multitude of weaponry, including high explosives, chainsaws, flame-throwers and handguns. They can also be operated in swarms with visually very impressive results (think of the opening ceremony of the 2018 Olympics). But if a swarm of drones was deployed maliciously, they could present serious problems, due to the possibility of overwhelming, to any sort of defence system. Countermeasures There is a multiplicity of countermeasures available to stop drones but each has its downsides. They range from kinetic solutions (think of ramming another drone into the target, or shooting down a drone with a projectile) to jamming (jam the signal between the controller and the drone and, given that drones can be pre-programmed, jam the GPS signal that the drone uses for positioning) to low-tech solutions like netting or even training raptors (eagles/falcons) to intercept drones. But shooting drones out of the sky would endanger people and property on the ground; jamming signals such as wifi and GPS would affect a much wider audience than just maliciously operated drones; netting an entire site may not be practical and maintaining a watchful raptor over a facility continuously would be extremely demanding, especially during the hours of darkness.
With the widespread availability of parts available to buy online, it is very easy to source all of the parts needed to construct a drone of virtually any size, payload capability and endurance so simply controlling the supply of drones would not provide any protection from their misuse. So drones offer both tremendous benefits but also some significant threats. As with so many technologies that have emerged and been developed over the years, the currently foreseen applications outlined in this article are probably only scratching the surface.
Roger Johnson is a Risk Engineer specializing in risk engineering surveys of various energy facilities at Willis Towers Watson in London.
1 https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/14/world/middleeast/saudi-arabia-refineries-drone-attack.html
