CAM-151

A burst in a pipe run

The pipe yard of the plant. One of the pipes has burst at a joint and a jet under pressure is hitting the concrete; dirty water has spread across the slab and is running towards the foreground, towards a drain. An operator in a white helmet stands on the other side of the pipe, watching it. Behind, the clarifier and the basins; to the right, the valves and the pump sets.

CAM-151 · PROCESS PIPE RUN · WATER ON DRY SLAB

What IRIS understands

What it recognises in this scene

pressurised jet
water on the slab
the pipe run
operator in the yard
floor drain

What this camera measures

An alert says something is happening. The reading says how much.

6 minWater outside for
10:44Last frame with a dry floor
1Drains taking water
1 / 2Usable ways across the yard
2People in the frame
10:50Time of the alert

The figures on this screen are an example from the illustration, not any client's measurement.

The rule

You decide once. IRIS applies it always.

water appears on a stretch of slab the plant has marked as dry and is still there some minutes later

Then

alert the maintenance lead with the camera and the section
keep the video from before the water showed up
log the time of the last frame with a dry floor

The instruction that set it up«Tell me when water shows up in the pipe yard, because that floor is meant to be dry.»

What changes

What changes for whoever answers for the site

A joint that lets go at three in the morning is heard by nobody: the yard is empty and the plant sounds exactly the same with a burst pipe as without one. It gets found on the morning round, with water across the whole slab, a drain swallowing what it should not, and a few hours of pumping thrown away. IRIS does not close the valve and does not stop the pump: a person decides that, and a person has to get there. What the camera does is flag water where the floor should be dry, with the time of the last dry frame, so that the call comes at quarter past three instead of at seven.

What people usually ask

Does IRIS measure how much water is being lost?

No. IRIS sees water where the floor should be dry, and that is as far as it goes. It does not measure flow, it does not analyse the water and it does not know what liquid it is: it could be raw water, treated water or anything else that runs through that section. Flow comes from the plant's flowmeter and the analysis comes from the lab. What the camera adds is that somebody finds out now rather than in four hours.

What if the floor is wet because it has just been hosed down?

The rule is written by the plant, not by us. You mark on the image which stretch of slab has to be dry, in which time band, and how many minutes to wait before raising it. If wash-down happens every Tuesday at six, that band is left out. That is what keeps the alert meaningful: if it fires every time someone picks up a hose, within a week nobody looks at it.

Does IRIS recognise the operator looking at the leak?

No. IRIS does not identify anyone: it does not recognise faces, it does not read number plates, it does not compare them against any database and it does not store who anyone is. It counts that there are two people in the frame, because knowing whether somebody is already there changes whether you need to call anyone else. Who they are, it knows nothing about.

Other cameras

Simulation · how IRIS works

This isn’t a video. It’s a slice of the real screen.

A summary of the real interface, played hands-free. You see one case from start to finish; what you do not see are the other screens, and there are many.