Satellite-enabled industrial monitoring powered by the Internet of Things (IoT) and AI can help energy operators build supply chain resilience, writes Damian Lewis, market development manager at Viasat Enterprise.
Price volatility, changing market dynamics and regulatory and societal pressure to decarbonise are all reasons why energy operators are keen to get better oversight across their supply chain and understand exactly what is happening across vast, remote, often hard-to-reach, infrastructure. In fact, as many as one-third of senior energy leaders say their company is already dealing with the fallout of a lack of supply chain resilience.
As operators look for ways to solve these competing challenges, satellite-enabled industrial monitoring – pushing data towards advanced operational AI platforms – can make the difference. You can’t manage what you can’t measure, and connected IoT and AI can be a great facilitator in solving this challenge. Implementing these solutions can create a more efficient network that can yield greater return on investment, and it is often more sustainable and safer for employees.
Before we dive into the various applications, let’s explain exactly what we mean by terms like ‘satellite-enabled IoT’ and ‘operational AI’. In some ways, these have become go-to buzzwords in recent years – particularly after AI hit the mainstream with ChatGPT and with similar applications gaining popularity with everyday users.
Put simply, IoT refers to the huge range of sensors, devices and connected machinery that are the enablers of “smart” in today’s world. This has been around for some years now, and businesses across most industries have either embraced or are embracing Industrial IoT (IIoT) applications in various forms.
Of course, for connected IoT to work, you need connectivity. For oil and gas operators and utilities operating vast networks in remote regions, globally available satellite connectivity is the most reliable, resilient and secure choice – or is often used to augment or back up existing terrestrial coverage.
However, with all this satellite-enabled IoT providing huge volumes of data across not just supply chains but also assets, infrastructure, fleet and employees, the results can be overwhelming. That is where operational AI comes in. AI platforms consolidate these huge data sets into accessible information and actionable insights, helping an organisation make better decisions, more quickly.