Towards a Real-time Mitigation of High Temperature while Drilling using a Multi-agent System
International audience; In oilfield wells, while drilling for several kilometers below surface, high temperature damages the drilling tools. This costs money and time for tripping operations to change the damaged tool. Existing temperature mitigation techniques have several drawbacks including a long response time, analogue signal issues and human intervention. In this work, we empower the down-hole tools with a coordination mechanism to mitigate high temperature in soft real time by controlling a down-hole actuator through a voting process. The tools are represented by agents that control the sensors and actuators embedded in these tools. To implement the proposed system properly, a model …
A Cyber-Physical System for Semi-autonomous Oil & Gas Drilling Operations
International audience; In Oil&Gas drilling operations and after reaching deep drilled depths, high temperature increases significantly enough to damage the down-hole drilling tools, and the existing mitigation process is insufficient. In this paper, we propose a Cyber-Physical System (CPS) where agents are used to represent the collaborating entities in Oil\&Gas fields both up-hole and down-hole. With the proposed CPS, down-hole tools respond to high temperature autonomously with a decentralized collective voting based on the tools' internal decision model while waiting for the cooling performed up-hole by the field engineer. This decision model, driven by the tools' specifications, aims t…
Extent of the impact of the Chinese wildlife trade on the world's wildlife
Overharvesting is one of the key drivers of biodiversity loss. With rising human population and standards of living in many emergent and developing countries, demand for wildlife is on the increase. As it endangers such charismatic and evolutionarily distinct species as elephants, rhinoceroses or pangolins, the particular case of China has been in the spotlight in recent years. The number of species impacted by the Chinese wildlife trade seems to be very high, and numerous taxonomic groups to be affected. Species targeted originate from many places worldwide beyond the mere borders of China or its neighboring countries. I therefore aimed to quantify the exact extent of the impact of the Chi…