Gasunie has utilized External Corrosion Direct Assessment (ECDA) as proposed by the NACE as a valuable
method to assess the corrosion threat to unpiggable pipelines. ln addition, a new probabilistic methodology has
been adopted to quantify the results of an ECDA and to account for any uncertainties experienced throughout the
process. This approach, based on Structural Reliability Analysis (SRA) and Bayesian statistics, uses the data
gathered in the pre-assessment to calculate a failure frequency for each ECDA region defined. In the indirect
inspections step, the method allows automatic updating of the expected number of both coating and corrosion
defects based on the results of two aboveground surveys (one for the detection of each). In the direct
examinations step, the method uses the results from excavations to automatically update the performance
characteristics of the survey techniques (e.g. probabililty of detection and probability of false indication), the time
of initiation of corrosion defects, the defect depth, corrosion growth rate and several other relevant parameters.
The failure frequency is updated accordingly.