I caught up with Danilo Ribeiro, Strategic Alliance Program Manager from OSIsoft, at Cisco Live recently, and shot a video of the OSIsoft demonstration he was showing. In the video, Danilo talks about Fog Computing and thermal imaging analytics at the edge using the OSIsoft PI System and Cisco IOx.

The PI System is used by many, if not most, industrial companies to capture real-time data and events and manage an historian, interfacing to critical ERP, BI, process monitoring and office systems.

Danilo's demonstration shows a thermal imaging camera detecting a gas 'flare' from the field (in the demo it's a heat source mounted above the booth in this case to show the real-time data capture). The OSIsoft system is able to detect the anomaly and alert remote operators rapidly so that corrective action can be taken.

In the video Danilo talks about how the demonstration simulates a flare monitoring system. This is the kind of monitoring that happened in oil and gas fields like the one in operation at PETRONAS Penapisan Melake, Malaysia. PETRONAS has evolved into a fully integrated multinational oil and gas company. PETRONAS' refining capacity, at 323,300 bpd (2012) is over half of the 2012 total refining capacity in Malaysia. PETRONAS CARIGALI is the upstream arm of Malaysia's state-owned, fully integrated oil and gas company.

As a Cisco customer, PETRONAS has experienced the value of collaboration both at the corporate (Business Network) and field level (Control Network). Using the PI system, they are able to monitor assets and processes in real time. The system provides for monitoring, optimization and improvement, as well as reporting. And, of course, that monitoring includes flare (emissions) monitoring, as in this demonstration -just with a little more real-life sophistication!

These systems are critical for oil and gas companies as they strive to maintain regulatory compliance, increase safety and improve operational efficiencies.

You can find out more about OSIsoft here, and, as always, there's more information about Cisco in the oil and gas industry here: http://www.cisco.com/go/oilandgas.