A fuzzy expert system for mitigation of risks and effective control of gas pressure reduction stations with a real application

Environmental changes and increased uncertainty due to technical damage, explosions and large fires have caused the risk of an inevitable element in the gas industry. This study purposes developing a new hybrid fuzzy expert system as a decision support system to mitigate the risk associated with gas transmission stations. The designed knowledge-based system combines the procedural and descriptive rules based on experts' judgments to analyze the complex relationships between the different components of a gas pressure reduction station. The developed fuzzy expert system is coded in C language integrated production system (CLIPS) and is linked with MATLAB software for calling fuzzy functions. A real case study of gas pressure reduction stations in Iranian gas industry is conducted to validate the proposed expert system model. The expert system provides more than one thousand rules based on expert knowledge to prevent the pressure drop and the quality loss of gas or shutting off gas flow which accordingly increases gas flow stability. The proposed expert system could minimize the risk of hazardous scenarios, such as leakage and corrosion, in the gas industry and provide an acceptable precision in the provision of periodic control strategies and appropriate response under an emergency condition.