Oilfield Accidents: How Tech Has Streamlined the Process of Evidence Gathering

When a serious oilfield accident happens, workers can incur injuries like:

Burns from fires or chemical leaks
Lost limbs from heavy machinery
Paralysis from falls
Brain damage from toxic fumes

The injuries can be catastrophic. They can leave victims unable to work. And they can also permanently disable them. That’s why getting evidence about why the accident occurred matters so much.

The evidence can force the oil company to pay for the injured workers’:

Medical treatment
Rehabilitation programs
Disability aids (wheelchairs, home care, etc.)
Lost income from not being able to work

Without strong evidence, oil companies will often try to avoid paying victims proper compensation. But with undeniable proof of what went wrong, victims can get the care and support they desperately need.

Gathering good evidence also creates accountability, meaning oil companies have to take responsibility for unsafe conditions and change them. This can prevent future injuries from oilfield accidents. Call an oil field injury lawyer.

The Evidence Challenge

Many oilfields are in very remote places. Just getting investigators to these locations can cost a lot – in terms of time and money.

Plus, oilfields themselves are hazardous places with a high risk of fire, explosion, or chemical leaks. It’s hard for investigators to safely walk around the site taking photos and samples after a serious accident has occurred. They have to dodge damaged equipment, toxic spills, and unstable structures that could collapse at any moment.

Without advanced tech tools, investigators can’t fully capture the details of what went wrong. And as a result, evidence gets missed and oil companies can more easily avoid taking the blame.

Thankfully, significant technology advances over the last decade are fixing this problem!

Using Drones

In recent years oilfield accident investigators have also started deploying drones to quickly scan massive accident zones. The drones give them a unique “bird’s eye view” of the whole messy scene.

Using the drone images, evidence teams could closely study burn patterns, debris scatter, and structural weaknesses without actually climbing all over the melted and precariously standing rig. This kept investigators safe while still allowing them to document important evidence showing the explosion’s origin point and cause.

Drone tech has gotten so affordable and high-quality that even small-town police departments use them regularly. And oilfield accident teams are leveraging the same advantages, including:

Super quick deployment – drones can be launched in just minutes to start photographing and filming right away
Safely reachable angles – drones can hover in hard-to-access spots humans can’t get to safely on the ground
Detailed imaging – high-resolution cameras mounted on drones can take super crisp, closeup shots showing tiny details
Measurement accuracy – onboard sensors can precisely measure distances and the size of damaged areas

When an oilfield accident happens far offshore or deep in the wilderness, drones are now an invaluable early response tool for evidence teams.

Sensor Networks: Monitoring Danger Zones in Real Time

Another way today’s investigators leverage tech for evidence collection is through smart sensor networks.

Sensors can measure and record data like:

Temperature
Pressure
Toxic gas levels
Vibration intensity
Worker location

By constantly tracking these metrics, sensors can automatically warn managers and workers if dangerous thresholds get crossed. For example, if flammable methane gas begins accumulating, sensors send alerts so the area can quickly be evacuated. Or if a pipeline pressure spikes, automated valves trigger to release the built-up intensity.

These sensor abilities help prevent disasters from happening in the first place. However, when accidents do still strike, evidence teams can use the sensor records to recreate what went wrong:

Fast emerging fires become visible if heat and smoke sensors trigger rapidly
Quickly worsening equipment failures show up clearly across various sensor streams
Workers’ panic as a situation intensifies can be inferred by tracking biometrics from wearable sensors

The rich data sensors capture makes reconstructing the timeline leading up to a full-on catastrophe much more accurate. Investigators get factual documentation of what equipment failed, what safety protocols broke down, and at what points workers became endangered.

With hard recorded data about the sequence, managers can’t as easily cover up their safety negligence or how long problems persisted beforehand. Sensor networks make evidence teams much smarter about piecing together the truth.

3D Laser Scanning: Freezing the Chaos Digitally

Another way today’s accident investigators benefit from tech is through advanced 3D scanning tools. These special imaging machines use millions of laser beams and fancy algorithms to map the contours of any environment in intricate, photorealistic 3D.

In the past, collecting spatial evidence across a gigantic oilfield accident site required tons of individual measurements, diagrams, photos, and notes that each show only a tiny snapshot of the full chaos. Trying to stitch these all together into one coherent recreation was painfully slow and complex.

Now, when an offshore rig tilts sideways after an accident or pipes burst open across acres of desert, investigators simply wheel in a laser scanning device to digitally capture the entire site. In hours they can generate an advanced 3D model accurately showing:

The position/angle of tipped equipment
The length and direction of torn metal structures
The volume of spilled chemicals across the land
Heights and durability information for loose debris piles

This realistic virtual environment based on laser scanning lets investigators explore the disaster zone without having to physically navigate unsafe terrain. From their computer screens, they can take measurements, bookmark evidence points, and create flythroughs – gaining a comprehensive understanding of how the accident escalated.

These scanning gadgets freeze reality immediately so no details are lost. Investigators gain precision data about what failed where and when – key facts that help prove liability later on.

Virtual Reality: Immersive Recreations of The Catastrophe

Expanding on 3D laser scanning, some evidence teams now use virtual reality (VR) tools to recreate oilfield accidents for further analysis. VR is an immersive digital simulation using headsets and hand controllers so observers feel transported inside a lifelike environment.

While VR is often associated with fun gaming applications, this emerging tech is now letting investigators virtually walk through accurate recreations of deadly oilfield disasters.

Based on drone footage, sensor data historical records, and 3D scans, entire oil platforms, desert worksites, or offshore rigs can be simulated down to every last valve, puddle, and flickering light. Wearing VR headsets, investigators can explore every inch to understand what happened based on environmental clues.

For example, if a pipe explodes, VR users can study blast patterns on nearby walls, follow the pipe back to its origin facility, and track fire progression by mapping charred remains. Things overlooked in messy real-world inspections become plainly visible.

VR also helps convey the human experience of disasters for legal accountability. Simulators can model falling rubble, toxic smoke, shaking floors, and other impacts on virtual workers so liability experts better understand victims’ experiences.

While still somewhat costly, virtual reality is expected to bring an incredibly helpful new forensic tool to oilfield accident scenes. Investigators get unlimited chances to walk through disasters safely while uncovering micro-clues about what went wrong and when.

Artificial Intelligence: Finding Overlooked Connections

One last way today’s accident investigators tap into new technology is by feeding their gathered evidence into artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms. AI refers to sophisticated software that can sift through monumental data sets to uncover non-obvious patterns, anomalies and insights that humans would likely miss.

Say for example a tragic rig fire resulted from a fuel line unexpectedly rupturing right as the night shift began work. The sheer amount of evidence – hundreds of sensor logs, maintenance records, worker testimony docs, equipment manuals and atmospheric readings – seems impossible for investigators to fully correlate and make sense of manually.

Feeding the entire evidence set into an AI system specialized around industrial accidents allows high-speed pattern matching though. In hours or days instead of weeks, the AI can surface critical connections that show:

The fuel line segment had corroded consistently for 18 months straight
7 other sections had been flagged by sensor thresholds the week before
But only 2 old work orders were submitted to repair any degradation issues in the past 6 months – none addressing this stretch.

These kinds of obscure yet telling revelations unearthed algorithmically help prove willful negligence by key leaders. Investigators have statistical ammunition to back accusations that managers ignored plenty of warning signs beforehand.

The Body Itself as an Evidence Source

Alongside tracking worker movements externally, today’s safety technologies allow for the use of the human body itself as a rich evidence source after accidents.

More oilfield technicians now wear special biometric watches, helmets, vests and badges that continually measure things like:

Body temperature
Heart rate
Blood oxygen levels
Environmental toxin intake
Stress indicators

If an explosion suddenly occurs, data from these wearables on victims creates a quantified look back at the extreme conditions they faced and exactly how it affected them biologically.

These bodily evidence sources better prove victims endured legitimate trauma from unsafe practices. Injuries can’t as easily be falsely blamed on “pre-existing conditions” or other excuses companies historically used to deny accountability.

Conclusion

In summary, technology has clearly made a big difference in helping oilfield accident investigators gather and analyze evidence more efficiently and safely than ever before in the past.

Drones grant quick eyes in the sky perspective of immense accident zones. Smart sensor networks silently monitor danger levels until disaster strikes. 3D scans freeze chaotic scenes digitally for close study. And cloud storage makes accessing materials easy for anyone involved.

Pairing photos, sensor streams, GPS traces and even bodily response data gives evidence teams multidimensional perspectives over what went wrong and when. Finding gaps or deceit becomes much harder for negligent companies.

Most importantly, factual clarity achieved faster through tech evidence creates organizational accountability so systemic issues get addressed. When oilfield safety procedures clearly fail, are ignored, or never established in the first place, responsibility gets fixed saving future lives.

While some data-gathering methods raise valid privacy issues, for dangerous fields like offshore drilling the safety payoffs still seem worth the potential downsides.

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