From: Offshore
Rick Scott, Cris DeWitt
Until a few years ago, many offshore assets were able to operate their entire working lives using only the safety features that were installed during construction. But times are changing. The historically slow pace of technology adoption has accelerated as the widespread use of automation becomes more practical and cost-effective. With the industry’s move toward deployment of highly instrumented, automated, and connected assets, there has been a realization that new operational challenges face floating production, storage, and offloading (FPSO) units.
Today, investing in cybersafety is an accepted requirement for FPSOs and other offshore assets, and the amount being invested is growing rapidly. Analysts predict global spend in this area will top $1 trillion over the next five years. With such high levels of financial commitment and attention, cybersecurity is a hot topic. As a result of its surrounding publicity, it is easy to get caught up in buzz words and to be overwhelmed by the flood of information in the public domain. Arguably, if the industry is to find a way to contend long term with cyber threats, a more focused, precise, and measurable way – a rigorous engineering approach – is needed to deal with such challenges.
Beyond the physical asset
Classification societies have worked with the offshore industry since its inception to improve the safety and security of assets, but the face of safety is changing. A new approach that extends beyond the physical vessel is being conceptualized by the cybersafety team at ABS. Like the steel exterior, which is designed based on mathematical descriptions, FPSOs and other vessels have a cyberstructure operating on interconnected networks that, until now, has been mostly unseen. Yet, that structure has as much impact on the FPSO’s functionality and safety as the steel vessel does.
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In creating and providing guidance for safe operation of cybersystems, it is critical to understand that the computational FPSO can be and must be engineered with the same principles as the steel FPSO. The focal point of that engineering is the development of architectural and visual representations of data generation points, communication pathways, and use points for actionable knowledge. The model of the cybersystem of an FPSO is being developed to mathematically describe and investigate the computerized elements of a vessel in much the same way that the steel vessel is described, investigated, and made safer. The intent is to use this model to describe the system’s characteristics (e.g., tasks, behaviors, capabilities, efficiencies, vulnerabilities, failures, etc.) using mathematically based engineering concepts.
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