Oil pipeline network system health monitoring is important primarily due to the high cost of failure consequences. Optimal sensor selection helps provide more effective system health information from the perspective of economic and technical constraints. Optimization models confront different issues. For instance, many oil pipeline system performance models are inherently nonlinear, requiring nonlinear modelling. Optimization also confronts modeling uncertainties. Oil pipeline systems are among the most complicated and uncertain dynamic systems, as they include human elements, complex failure mechanisms, control systems, and most importantly component interactions. In this paper, an entropy-based Bayesian network optimization methodology for sensor selection and placement under uncertainty is developed. Entropy is a commonly used measure of information often been used to characterize uncertainty, particularly to quantify the effectiveness of measured signals of sensors in system health monitoring contexts. The entropy based Bayesian network optimization outlined herein also incorporates the effect that sensor reliability has on system information entropy content, which can also be related to the sensor cost. This approach is developed further by incorporating system information entropy and sensor costs in order to evaluate the performance of sensor combinations. The paper illustrates the approach using a simple oil pipeline network example. The so-called particle swarm optimization algorithm is used to solve the multi-objective optimization model, establishing the Pareto frontier.

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