Application of Cloud Computing in Hazardous Mechanical Industries

Transcription

1 International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4, April By Application of Cloud Computing in Hazardous Mechanical Industries Dipankar Mishra Dept of Electronics & Communication Pusa Polytechnic, New Delhi, India dm.pusa@gmail.com Ratnesh Kumar Gupta Dept of Mechanical Engg Pusa Polytechnic, New Delhi, India Abstract : As technology has developed, the inherent risk factor in industries has also increased. Heavy industries are prone to accidents mainly due to the fatigue factor of the operators combined with the hazardous setting of the machinery being used. Giant turbine of power generators, nuclear fuelled power houses are some examples of hazardous industries. The risk factor involved in such industries has been amply demonstrated in the recent nuclear disaster that took place in Japan following the earthquake and the tsunami. Cloud computing, a buzz word in the IT sector can be tweaked and adapted to remote management of such hazardous industries to reduce the human errors and also the human intervention to a great extent. Human lives that may be lost during operation disaster can be vastly reduced by reducing the on-site manpower to the bare minimum. This paper presents an approach to the use to cloud computing in hazardous mechanical industries. Keywords : Risk mitigation, disaster management, hazardous industries, cloud computing application 1.Introduction : Heavy industries have been developing at a rapid pace. This has been primarily because of the ever growing demand for goods and products from these industries. Consequently industries have been employing technology to produce goods at a faster rate. Power stations are being setup to cater to the demands of uninterrupted of these heavy industries. Hydro electric power stations are being setup, thermal and gas fired power units are being modified and developed, nuclear power plants are coming to the fore in a major way, to reduce the gap between supply and demand. All these industries use heavy and dangerous equipments. These heavy industry machinery require constant monitoring and supervision. This requires manpower, trained in that particular field, present onsite to manage the machinery. As the entire machinery has to be managed 24hrs a day 365 hours a year, manpower is deployed onsite year on. This results in workers being posted in shifts. The evening and the night shifts are those shifts where maximum accidents and disasters take place. The primary cause of these incidents can be attributed to lack of concentration, biological fatigue of the body and other human parameters which are generally at low values as night descends. Cloud Computing, which is now widely used by the IT industry to mesmerizing

2 International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4, April effect can be adapted to save human lives to a great extent in a disaster in heavy industries. 2.Cloud Computing : Cloud computing has been the buzz word in the IT industry for a long time now. Reducing resources, increasing productivity, providing services to the IT industry at a fraction of the traditional cost, cloud computing applications are on the rise. Using the internet as a medium, various services are provided to the client at the remote end. There are three different types of setup 1. Public cloud 2. Private cloud 3. Hybrid cloud Private cloud (also called internal cloud or corporate cloud) refers to a proprietary computing architecture that provides hosted services to a limited number of people behind a firewall. The cloud computing platform built on your own hardware and software. A public cloud is one based on the standard cloud computing model, in which a service provider makes resources, such as applications and storage, available to the general public over the Internet. Public cloud services may be free or offered on a pay-per-usage model. A hybrid cloud is a composition of at least one private cloud and at least one public cloud. A hybrid cloud is typically offered in one of two ways: a vendor has a private cloud and forms a partnership with a public cloud provider, or a public cloud provider forms a partnership with a vendor that provides private cloud platforms. A hybrid cloud is a cloud computing environment in which an organization provides and manages some resources in-house and has others provided externally. The services provided by cloud computing can be broadly classified into the following categories; 2.1.Platform as a Service : In this service structure, the platform requirements for development is provided as a service. This can include operating system, application softwares or development software. It is at this stage that access to services can be monitored also. 2.2.Software as a Service : In this service structure, the application and development software are provided to the clients. 2.3.Infrastructure as a Service: This service structure provides both the hardware and software requirements of the client. Computing hardware, network hardware and other associated software are provided to the client as per requirement. Implementation of Cloud Computing in Hazardous industries : Cloud Computing is used in this proposed setup in conjunction with SCADA system. Large generation systems generally use a SCADA (supervisory control and data acquisition) system for operations. Parameter management, real time monitoring, parameter variation at different conditions are handled by the SCADA system. The SCADA system uses sensors at different points in the system and the data obtained

3 International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4, April from the sensors is fed to the control circuitry in the main control monitor. The monitoring panel is managed by the trained technical personal who watch the entire panel with a hawk eye to prevent any mishaps. Even though the entire operation of the system is automated, the management is in general on sensor based system with manual management. A general SCADA system setup has the following blocks as shown in figure 1. Figure 1 The above system operation is easy to understand. Optical fiber cable (OFC) is generally the medium to carry signals from the Interfacing Units (IFU) to the control Board. OFC also is used to interlink the main control panel with the regional and corporate offices through suitable network topology. Most SCADA systems do not provide manipulation of the control panel from any outside location, excepting the plant/industry site. 3.Drawbacks of the manual management system: The manual management system relies on a combination of automated sensor system coupled with manual scrutiny by onsite engineers. This relies heavily on the analysis of the system parameters by both the automated sensor system and the technical competence of the onsite engineers. As a result of manual management, the entire operation management is done by onsite engineers who work in shifts. Any emergency that cannot be handled by the onsite engineers at that point of time, results in either the plant/industry being shutdown or experts being rushed to the site. Vital time and money is lost in either shutting down the system or moving expert personnel to the site of operations. 4.Proposed System : Cloud Computing can be integrated into the SCADA system to provide control of the plant from anyplace on earth with a public Internet Connection. Figure 2 indicates a possible setup. As can be seen the operations can be monitored at various levels. The limitation imposed is that the control does not move out of the confines of the corporation itself.

4 International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4, April Figure 2 A private cloud server is setup between the LAN switch and the WAN/Public network router. This server has access to the entire SCADA network. The SCADA network is designed to provide all the features of the manual control management system over the network through port management of LAN. The cloud server is designed to provide communication services through VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) with added video communication. The availability of VoIP reduces the deployment of extra communication network for communication purposes which is generally separate to the SCADA system. The cloud server is then programmed to provide services to connections from the public network. These permissions can be either temporary, short term or long term. The type of access from the public network can be governed with each access type being defined in the facilities being availed. Operation of the setup : Once everything has been put in place, access can be provided to users through the public INTERNET service. For example if the services of an expert from USA is to be availed, then the corresponding IP address from which the expert is available is provided with the facility to access the entire SCADA system through LAN. During the period the SCADA is under control by the expert, communication between the expert and the local on site technicians can take place through VoIP. Instructions provided by the expert can be carried out by the technicians or the expert can operate the system while describing what he is working on simultaneously. Personnel from the corporate and regional offices can also be brought into the discussions through VoIP conferencing. If the requirement is for more than one expert to work simultaneously, the same facilities can be provided to multiple incoming connections through the cloud server. VoIP provides video conferencing also. This can also be used to facilitate face to face discussion. 5.Pro's and Con's of the proposed system : 1. The use of public Internet Service for access reduces the need for experts to travel to the plant site to the bare minimum. 2. Drastic reduction in cost of hiring an expert for consultations. 3. Expert access time either local or international is reduced to minutes as the accessibility of the expert

5 International Journal of Advancements in Research & Technology, Volume 2, Issue4, April depends on his/her availability on the Public Internet service 4. VoIP conferencing reduces cost of assembling personnel for training purposes by the expert. 5. More than one expert can be consulted simultaneously through VoIP, reducing the cost to the company. 6. Emergency situations can be handled by bringing in emergency personnel to the nearest SCADA/Internet connectivity center. 5.1Con's : 1. As the service is to be provided through public Internet service, reliability of the same is crucial. 2. The response of the cloud server is highly dependent on the hardware available. This may drive the cost of the same to a great extent. 3. Server management requires highly skilled personnel with indepth knowledge of both hardware and software. Hence skilled personnel should be available. 4. Power backup is crucial for the cloud server hence availability of the same is cruicial for the smooth operation. The proposed setup depends a lot on the modern communication technology as well as on the hardware that goes into the server. It also depends on the skill of the server operator who has to again work in shifts, a bottle neck which this setup tries to eliminate. Dependency on the technology creates a risk factor which is beyond the control of humans. Irrespective of the drawbacks that are present inherently in the system, the elimination of human intervention at the plant site can be achieved to a great extent. This can help in reducing the fatalities at the plant site in case of any disaster, a goal that this paper had set out to achieve. 7.References : 1. EON Research Center publications, Achen, Germany, pp 1-5, Northwest Power Planning Council, New Resource Characterization for the Fifth Power Plan 8 th August 2002, pp Cloud Computing, Implementation, Management and Security, JW Rittinghouse and JF Ransome, CRC Press. 4. Cloud computing best practices, Halley Beard, ITIL, London UK 5. As Internet service is used for interconnectivity, high bandwidth is essential to remove latency and lag. 6.Conclusion :