OffshoreMuster: An Integrated Real Time Localisation, Mustering and Evacuation Management System for Offshore Oil & Gas Health and Safety Operations

Abstract

Oil & Gas offshore platforms are industrial "towns", ranked among the most hazardous working environments. Emergency situations in such environments are unpredictable and characterized by time pressure and rapidly changing conditions. OffshoreMuster brings together the latest technological advancements in real-time personnel tracking and e-mustering, complementing the existing Health and Safety (HSE) procedures, by enabling situation awareness over personnel location and status which is a key factor supporting better decision-making towards zero casualty in emergency situations. The system's underlying technology, developed after years of dedicated research and development efforts, consists of specialised low-power wireless wearable devices, customised gateways and a secure backbone network infrastructure feeding a modular decision support software system with real-time streams of data for processing and visualisation of information relevant to personnel situation assessment. HSE processes have been transformed into systematic procedures, allowing additional computer-aided decision support features, like the real-time observation of the fire-fighting team response status, the concentration of people in specific areas, instant alerting or the last-known position of a missing person. Lightweight ubiquitous devices in the form of a bracelet or embedded in the uniform are assigned to People on Board (PoB) and periodically transmit real-time location and status awareness data. A network of dedicated gateways, which are placed at specific locations on the platform or vessel, connected through the infrastructure's ethernet or wireless network, relay the data to a central decision support system. Specialised localisation algorithms and data analytics tools process the data to estimate the personnel positions and PoB status information, interactively visualising in real-time location awareness, incident escalation and alerting, which can significantly reduce response time and speed up a safe evacuation procedure. Computer-aided decision support combined with ultra-low power autonomous IoT technologies systems play a significant role in controlling, managing, and preventing critical incidents in harsh working environments, contributing into minimisation of accidents occurrence in Oil & Gas environments. The presented underling technology has been validated in maritime environments with more than 500 people taking part in real drills (TRL-8). The technology has been tailored to enhance the safety of personnel working in offshore Oil & Gas assets, currently being under laboratory testing and evaluation while a full-scale industrial deployment is scheduled for the autumn of 2021. The OffshoreMuster hardware and software components, integrated into a unified solution tailored for the offshore Oil & Gas industry, are presented for the first time. The system has been designed and developed with the support of the European Commission, co-funded by the Fast Track to Innovation Program (Grant Agreement Number 878950).