A method useful for prioritizing leak surveys of one or more pipeline runs and facilities associated with an underground natural gas distribution pipeline potentially impacted by a seismic event, the method being executed by at least one computing device including a microprocessor and associated software in communication with a network, the method comprising:
- querying, over the network, a US Geological Survey database containing near real-time seismic data, the near real-time seismic data being for a geographic area experiencing the seismic event and including ground velocity data;
- retrieving, over the network, a user-defined subset of the near real-time seismic data, the user-defined subset including a selected service territory, at least a portion of the selected service territory lying within the geographic area;
- transforming the ground velocity data contained in the user-defined subset into a quake velocity map, the transforming including applying a blasting standard, the quake velocity map including relational spatial data corresponding to the blasting standard;
- storing the quake velocity map as a quake velocity map layer in a database;
- querying, over the network, a pipeline mapping system database containing locations of the one or more of the pipeline runs and facilities associated with the underground natural gas distribution pipeline system;
- retrieving, over the network, a user-defined subset of the locations of the one or more pipeline runs and pipeline facilities lying at least partially within the selected service territory, the user-defined subset of the locations being locations contained within a spatial polygon specified by a user;
- storing the retrieved one or more pipeline runs and facilities as a pipeline map layer in the database;
- displaying on a graphical user interface of the at least one computing device a map of the selected service territory including the quake velocity map layer and the pipeline map layer, the quake velocity map having a first shading or first color, the pipeline map layer having a second shading or second color different than that of the first shading or first color, each map layer being visible when overlaid on one another;
- wherein, if a first portion of the one or more pipeline runs and pipeline facilities falls within a spatial polygonal-shaped area of interest on the map and the relational spatial data in proximity to the first portion represents a ground velocity of less than 5 cm/sec, then:
- issuing, over the network, a notification for the first portion to a predetermined one or more mobile computing devices, the notification selected from the group consisting of an awareness notification to monitor and a patrol notification;
- wherein, the patrol notification is for a predetermined ground velocity greater than that for the awareness notification to monitor, the patrol notification including a conduct engineering assessment task if a ground velocity exceeds a minimum than that for the patrol notification;
- and
- wherein, if a second portion of the one or more pipeline runs and facilities is contained within another spatial polygonal-shaped area of interest on the map and the spatial relational data in proximity to the second portion represents a ground velocity of at least 5 cm/sec, then:
- issuing, over the network, a leak survey notification for the second portion to the predetermined one or more mobile computing devices;
- wherein, the said notifications and the map are received over the network by the predetermined one or more mobile computing devices;
- and
- wherein, the predetermined one or more mobile computing devices display the said notifications and the map on a corresponding graphical interface of the one or more mobile computing devices;
- and
- wherein, the method further comprises:
- defining on the at least one computing device or the predetermined one or more mobile computing devices, a spatial polygonal-shaped area of interest on the map within a boundary of the quake velocity map;
- and
- displaying on a respective one of the least one computing device and the predetermined one or more mobile computing devices only those portions of the map lying within the spatial polygonal-shaped area of interest.