In France, the company operates more than 32,500 km of buried transportation pipelines. These structures cover most of the French territory and are subject to regular monitoring and inspection, as part of our maintenance programs, to ensure their operational safety.

Some of these pipelines cross areas that can be hard to access or where field operators could be exposed to safety hazards should data collection be required. GRTgaz's commitment to safety is paramount and hence the company started exploring alternatives to automatize certain maintenance operations. In addition, the
company was looking to improve the reliability and repeatability of its data collection and processing in order to leverage historical information.

River crossings were rapidly identified as being amongst the most complicated environments to operate in given the logistical constraints involved, with the need for divers and supporting equipment, and the risk to operators, as above-water activity can be present.

GRTgaz promotes and uses automatic remote technologies, such as magnetic inspections via UAV or multi-beam bathymetric via ROV, to perform high-precision digital twins for depth of cover assessment or bending strain assessments.

This issue of the Pipeline Technology Journal, with its focus on "Remote Sensing", presents a comprehensive overview on the following pages.

Sincerely,
Michel Pinet
Head of Network Monitoring
GRTgaz