Development of Systematic Framework for an Intelligent Decision Support System in Gas Transmission Network

In a gas transmission network (GTN), faults can easily propagate due to the interconnections of streams. The main objective of this paper is to develop a systematic framework for an online decision support system (DSS) in order to make the right decisions to get the GTN out of critical conditions (which cannot be handled by the plant controllers) smoothly. One of the key features of the proposed scheme is its lack of dependence on prior knowledge of the fault signals (e.g., number of faults, and their origin). In this article, the GTN is modeled by a fuzzy directed graph (FDG). The proposed approach utilizes a reasoning algorithm based on the deviations that exist in the process variables (attributes) of target nodes, in order to detect the most crucial attributes (equipment) whose manipulating variables can be changed appropriately (i.e., upward or downward) to get the GTN out of the abnormal condition gracefully. Thereafter, quantitative decisions are made from qualitative decisions, after which the for...