Abstract
Real-time signals exchanged during a drilling operation are in constant evolution and provided by multiple stakeholders that have distinct perspectives on the drilling process. To achieve an improved drilling management and control, it is desirable that real-time drilling data can be exchanged seamlessly without necessitating any human intervention to configure software applications.
By utilizing a shared drilling semantic model, drilling data-producers can expose the meaning of their real-time signals in a computer readable format. On the other hand, data-consumer applications can discover programmatically which data streams are the most appropriate for their functioning, therefore achieving seamless interoperability. This paper presents a drilling semantic framework that allows software solutions to achieve automatic and versatile self-configuration. Yet, the data exchange performances are compatible with the requirements of high-end applications involved in the management and control of drilling operations.
The semantic framework relies on few but important concepts for the drilling domain. It allows to qualify the physical quantity associated with the signal, to define its dimensionality and to specify necessary references. Another important notion is the differentiation between measurements, set-points, commands, estimated values, parameters, etc. Derived measurements are explicitly described as a function of direct ones. The semantic definition encompasses how signals are related to each other in a semantical network. Relationships between signals and their logical position, in a topological description of the drilling system, are also important. Finally, the conditional validity of signals may be semantically described.
A semantical model for drilling is presented together with its implementation in the OPC-UA real-time data exchange standard and will be made available to the drilling community for free usage.
