What is the data management problem?
The operations of mining, resources and energy companies globally are being affected by significant climate change events that are causing unprecedented rainfall levels, wildfires and storm events that threaten the safety of staff and local communities, and the integrity of the operations. In an attempt to address the increasing risks to infrastructure and the environment, companies are deploying greater numbers and varieties of IIoT monitoring sensors to gather larger volumes of data to give them greater insight into the potential impact of these events.
But all this data is being stored in different databases in disjointed silos with isolated data ingestion, storage and processing, creating even greater challenges with integration and analysis; with the result that all this data is not being adequately curated, fused, analysed or transformed to provide the data-driven insights needed, and this is compromising the effectiveness of critical risk controls designed to protect assets and people.
How might this problem be addressed?
In the last 5-10 years successful companies, regardless of their sector, have realised that they need to become a data-centric organisation. This requires a digital transformation, which can be considered to be made up of five essential components - this is nicely captured by the infographic below from the Havard Business Review.
Among other things, solving this data challenge requires an integrated performance monitoring approach that considers all critical aspects of any particular operation. Such an approach needs people, processes and technology working together in a harmonious and integrated manner, in addition to a culture change and introducing new ways of doing old things.
From a technology and process standpoint, the increasing volumes of disparate monitoring data from different sources all need to be securely collected, transformed, validated, processed, stored and visualized to support effective monitoring, risk management and reporting. Getting this right will enable an operation's stakeholders to:
+ analyse and interpret sensor data and pre-empt failures
+ be one step ahead of any potential impact on process operations
+ access and report on KPIs to fulfil any contractual responsibilities
+ report effectively to senior management, the Board and external agencies on how risks are being controlled and mitigated
How can this be achieved?
Insight Terra deliberately designed its real-time data management platform using a microservices software architecture to provide the greatest flexibility and agility in accommodating the widest range of different data types and protocols. In so doing, the platform is open-access and agnostic to the technology, device or data type to which it connects. And by hosting this platform in the AWS Cloud, Insight Terra has added additional layers of data security, resilience and scalability. Taken all together this combination enables a client to enjoy:
+ Validated and trusted insights
+ An integrated solution to transform and protect all monitoring data
+ Storage of all raw and transformed data in a secure repository
+ Secure access for all stakeholders to support analysis and reporting
