High System Reliability for Environmental Data Storage, 1996 Process Control, Electrical & Info. Conference Proceedings

Environmental monitoring and reporting requires a historical database. The monitoring system is required to be continuously operational to certify environmental compliance. Loss of data can have far reaching consequences if it happens “too” often. The design of a high reliability system involves hardware and network design and often redundancy. It also involves planning and documentation of procedures involving maintenance of software and hardware. Modifications to the system over time will increase the exposure to lost data. By carefully considering these factors a more maintainable system can be designed to provide highly reliable data acquisition, storage and reporting. Oil Systems, Inc. has hundreds of large historical data systems installed world wide. The technical support data base for these systems has been reviewed with attention to loss of data causal factors. These factors are relevant to most computer systems. Formal government reporting systems impose additional considerations over the usual mill information and control systems. The reliability of any system can be enhanced by examining data loss history when making the initial design decisions. A high reliability design is necessary to build successful enhanced monitoring and reporting systems as new environmental requirements take effect.