Enhancing Subsea Pipeline Reliability: A Combined FAHP and SAW Approach for Multi-criteria Decision-making

Abstract

This paper was undertaken to develop a decision-making model for subsea pipeline reliability. The recurring challenges affecting the physical and structural integrity of subsea pipeline has resulted in several downtime and operational failure at sea. Findings from FAHP and SAW methods shown that it was noticeable that the most influencing factors contributing to subsea pipeline failure was attributed to wrong installation (WI) and design error (DE) respectively. In addition, results from the SAW technique attributes subsea pipeline failure to wrong installation which may have resulted from operator incompetence or negligence to adhere to met-ocean conditions during installation phase. Thus, a comparative analysis from the decision tools with respect to the criterions was estimated, which revealed that wrong installation and design error are the prevailing factors or criterions contributing to subsea pipeline failure. It is therefore of utmost interest that during subsea drilling process, more attention should be given to the installation phase and the process should incorporates experts to minimize failure modes and impending failures.