CHEMICAL ENGINEERING TRANSACTIONS VOL. 67, 2018 A publication of The Italian Association of Chemical Engineering Online at www.aidic.it/cet Guest Editors: Valerio Cozzani, Bruno Fabiano, Davide Manca Copyright © 2018, AIDIC Servizi S.r.l. I SBN 978-88-95608-64-8; I SSN 2283-9216 Exponential Predictive Model of Excavation Damages on a Natural Gas Distribution Network Situated on Metropolitan Regions of São Paulo State – Brazil Flávio Vasconcelos da Silva a , Rodrigo Battaglini Pirani b , Sérgio Rodrigues* b , Stefano Fernandes De Sa b a MSc, School of Chemical Engineering, State University of Campinas, Brazil b Comgás, 134 Capitão Faustino de Lima Street, 03040-030, Brás, SP, Brazil rodrigues.sergio1965@gmail.com This study develops and demonstrates an exponential equation whose variables, Brazilian industrial quarterly GDP index and the total natural gas pipe length (transmission, distribution and external services) of a Brazilian distribution company, has the ability to predict the Absolut amount of third party excavation damages (annual monthly average value). With the use of the quarterly macroeconomic projection of Brazilian industry GDP and the company expansion scenarios is possible to simulate the amount excavation’s damages and establish an adequate dimensioning of actions for the predicted scenario over the natural gas pipes inside metropolitan areas. 1. Introduction The natural gas is pipe and delivered through an underground network for houses, residential, commerce buildings, industries and gas stations. Others companies of infrastructure uses underground pipes to deliver services as electricity, water, steam, communications, sewage, etc. Boosted by private and public resources that affect the GDP they performing excavations to maintain and expand these network systems. Maintenance actions are recognized as a risk factor (Okoh and Haugen, 2013), excavation damages are recognized together with internal and external corrosion as one of the most frequently causes of cost consequences in natural gas transmission and as the first in distribution pipeline infrastructures (Simonoff et al, 2009). The effects on structural building components due to gas pipelines incidents involving high-pressure transmission in urban areas received recently studies to model and predict their impact (Russo et al, 2014). There are well- identified causes and consequences but for occurrence predictions, only an exploratory study over excavation damages on pipes that identified the existence of cyclical forces that govern damage function (Rodrigues, 2012). The focus of this study was to verify a correlation between the GDP resources level with the third party damage normalized by the network length (km) and develop a quantitative prediction model not in a time domain but a result of time independent variables. 2. Concession rules and the studied area The Comgás, CG, was founded in 1872, and is a Brazil's distributor of piped natural gas with over 1 million of customers in residential, commercial and industrial segments over 80 municipalities in the São Paulo and Campinas metropolitan regions, and the regions of Santos and Paraiba Valley, 27% of Brazil's GDP comes from the CG concession area. As the distributing piped gas is a public service, it is subject to standards and requirements stated in the agreement signed with the concession authority, the Regulatory Agency of Sanitation and Energy of the State of São Paulo, ARSESP. (Comgás, 2018). DOI: 10.3303/CET1867134 Please cite this article as: Vasconcelos Da Silva F., Battaglini Pirani R., Rodrigues S., Fernandes De Sa S., 2018, Exponential predictive model of excavation damages on a natural gas distribution network situated on metropolitan regions of são paulo state – brazil, Chemical Engineering Transactions, 67, 799-804 DOI: 10.3303/CET1867134 799