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ISO 15926
The ISO 15926 is a standard for data integration, sharing, exchange, and hand-over
between computer systems.
The title, "Industrial automation systems and integrationIntegration of life-cycle
data for process plants including oil and gas production facilities", is regarded too
narrow by the present ISO 15926 developers. Having developed a generic data model
and Reference Data Library for process plants, it turned out that this subject is already
so wide, that actually any state information may be modelled with it.
Contents

1 History
2 The standard
o 2.1 Description
3 Projects and applications
o 3.1 Capital-intensive projects
o 3.2 Upstream Oil and Gas industry
4 Some technical background
5 References
6 External links

History
In 1991 a European Union ESPRIT-, named ProcessBase, started. The focus of this
research project was to develop a data model for lifecycle information of a facility
that would suit the requirements of the process industries. At the time that the project
duration had elapsed, a consortium of companies involved in the process industries
had been established: EPISTLE (European Process Industries STEP Technical
Liaison Executive). Initially individual companies were members, but later this
changed into a situation where three national consortia were the only members:
PISTEP (UK), POSC/Caesar (Norway), and USPI-NL (Netherlands). (later PISTEP
merged into POSC/Caesar, and USPI-NL was renamed to USPI).
EPISTLE took over the work of the ProcessBase project. Initially this work involved
a standard called ISO 10303-221 (referred to as "AP221"). In that AP221 we saw, for
the first time, an Annex M with a list of standard instances of the AP221 data model,
including types of objects. These standard instances would be for reference and would
act as a knowledge base with knowledge about the types of objects. In the early
nineties EPISTLE started an activity to extend Annex M to become a library of such
object classes and their relationships: STEPlib. In the STEPlib activities a group of
approx. 100 domain experts from all three member consortia, spread over the various
expertises (e.g. Electrical, Piping, Rotating equipment, etc.), worked together to
define the "core classes".
The development of STEPlib was extended with many additional classes and
relationships between classes and published as Open Source data. Furthermore, the
concepts and relation types from the AP221 and ISO 15926-2 data models were also
added to the STEPlib dictionary. This resulted in the development of Gellish English,

whereas STEPlib became the Gellish English dictionary. Gellish English is a

structured subset of natural English and is a modeling language suitable for
knowledge modeling, product modeling and data exchange. It differs from
conventional modeling languages (meta languages) as used in information technology
as it not only defines generic concepts, but also includes an English dictionary. The
semantic expression capability of Gellish English was significantly increased by
extending the number of relation types that can be used to express knowledge and
information.
For modelling-technical reasons POSC/Caesar proposed another standard than ISO
10303, called ISO 15926. EPISTLE (and ISO) supported that proposal, and continued
the modelling work, thereby writing Part 2 of ISO 15926. This Part 2 has official ISO
IS (International Standard) status since 2003.
POSC/Caesar started to put together their own RDL (Reference Data Library). They
added many specialized classes, for example for ANSI (American National Standards
Institute) pipe and pipe fittings. Meanwhile STEPlib continued its existence, mainly
driven by some members of USPI. Since it was clear that it was not in the interest of
the industry to have two libraries for, in essence, the same set of classes, the
Management Board of EPISTLE decided that the core classes of the two libraries
shall be merged into Part 4 of ISO 15926. This merging process has been finished.
Part 4 should act as reference data for part 2 of ISO 15926 as well as for ISO 10303221 and replaced its Annex M. On June 5, 2007 ISO 15926-4 was signed off as a TS
(Technical Specification).
In 1999 the work on an earlier version of Part 7 started. Initially this was based on
XML Schema (the only useful W3C Recommendation available then), but when Web
Ontology Language (OWL) became available it was clear that provided a far more
suitable environment for Part 7. Part 7 passed the first ISO ballot by the end of 2005,
and an implementation project started. A formal ballot for TS (Technical
Specification) was planned for December 2007. However, it was decided then to split
Part 7 into more than one part, because the scope was too wide.
The standard
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ISO 15926 has eleven parts (as of June 2009):

Part 1 - Introduction, information concerning engineering, construction and

operation of production facilities is created, used and modified by many
different organizations throughout a facility's lifetime. The purpose of ISO
15926 is to facilitate integration of data to support the lifecycle activities and
processes of production facilities.

Part 2 [1]- Data Model. a generic 4D model that can support all disciplines,
supply chain company types and life cycle stages, regarding information about
functional requirements, physical solutions, types of objects and individual
objects as well as activities.

Part 3 - Reference data for geometry and topology.

Parts 4 [2], 5,6 - Reference Data, the terms used within facilities for the
process industry.

Part 7 [3] - Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and
gas production facilities - Part 7: Implementation methods for the integration
of distributed systems: Template methodology.

Part 8 [4] - Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and
gas production facilities - Part 8: Implementation methods for the integration
of distributed systems: Web Ontology Language (OWL) implementation.

Part 9 - Implementation standards, with the focus on Faades, standard web

servers, web services, and security.

Part 10 - Test Methods.

Part 11 - Industrial Usage Guidelines.

Description
The model and the library are suitable for representing lifecycle information about
technical installations and their components.
They can also be used for defining the terms used in product catalogs in e-commerce.
Another, more limited, use of the standard is as a reference classification for
harmonization purposes between shared databases and product catalogues that are not
based on ISO 15926.
The purpose of ISO 15926 is to provide a Lingua Franca for computer systems,
thereby integrating the information produced by them. Although set up for the process
industries with large projects involving many parties, and involving plant operations
and maintenance lasting decades, the technology can be used by anyone willing to set
up a proper vocabulary of reference data in line with Part 4.
In Part 7 the concept of Templates is introduced. These are semantic constructs, using
Part 2 entities, that represent a small piece of information. These constructs then are
mapped to more efficient classes of n-ary relations that interlink the Nodes that are
involved in the represented information.
In Part 8 the data model of Part 2 is mapped to OWL, and so are, in concept, the
Reference Data of Part 4 and the templates of Part 7. For validation and reasoning
purposes all are represented in First-Order Logic as well.
In Part 9 these Node and Template instances are stored in Faades. A Faade is an
RDF quad store, set up to a standard schema and an API. Any Faade only stores the
data for which the Faade owner is responsible.
Each participating computer system maps its data from its internal format to such
ISO-standard Node and Template instances. These are stored in a System Faade,
each system its own Faade.
Data can be "handed over" from one Faade to another in cases where data
custodianship is handed over (e.g. from a contractor to a plant owner, or from a

manufacturer to the owners of the manufactured goods). Hand-over can be for a part
of all data, whilst maintaining full referential integrity.
Faades can be set up for the consolidation of data by handing over data produced by
various participating computer systems and stored in their System Faades. Examples
are: a Faade for a project discipline, a project, a plant).
Documents are user-definable. They are defined in XML Schema and they are, in
essence, only a structure containing cells that make reference to instances of
Templates. This represents a view on all lifecycle data: since the data model is a 4D
(space-time) model, it is possible to present the data that was valid at any given point
in time, thus providing a true historical record. It is expected that this will be used for
Knowledge Mining.
Data can be queried by means of SPARQL. In any implementation a restricted
number of Faades can be involved, with different access rights. This is done by
means of creating a CPF Server (= Confederation of Participating Faades). An
Ontology Browser allows for access to one or more Faades in a given CPF,
depending on the access rights.
Projects and applications
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There are a number of projects working on the extension of the ISO 15926 standard in
different application areas.
Capital-intensive projects
Within the application of Capital Intensive projects, some cooperating implementation
projects are running:

The ADI Project of FIATECH, to build the tools (which will then be made
available in the public domain)
o

The tools and deliverables can be seen on the ISO 15926 knowledge
base: [5]

The IDS Project of POSC Caesar Association, to define product models

required for data sheets

A joint ADI-IDS project is the ISO 15926 WIP

The DEXPI project: The objective of DEXPI is to develop and promote a

general standard for the process industry covering all phases of the lifecycle of
a (petro-)chemical plant, ranging from specification of functional requirements
to assets in operation. See more at dexpi.org

Upstream Oil and Gas industry

The Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF) has decided to use ISO 15926 (also
known as the Oil and Gas Ontology) as the instrument for integrating data across
disciplines and business domains for the Upstream Oil and Gas industry. It is seen as

one of the enablers of what has been called the next (or second) generation of
Integrated operations, where a better integration across companies is the goal.[1]
The following projects are currently running (May 2009):

The Integrated Operations in the High North (IOHN) project is working on

extending ISO 15926 to handle real-time data transmission and
(pre-)processing to enable the next generation of Integrated Operations.

The Environment Web project to include environmental reporting terms and

definitions as used in EPIM's EnvironmentWeb in ISO 15926.

Finalised projects include:

The Integrated Information Platform (IIP) project working on establishing a

real-time information pipeline based on open standards. It worked among
others on:
o

Daily Drilling Report (DDR) to including all terms and definitions in

ISO 15926. This standard became mandatory on February 1, 2008[2]
for reporting on the Norwegian Continental Shelf by the Norwegian
Petroleum Directorate (NPD) and Safety Authority Norway (PSA).
NPD says that the quality of the reports has improved considerably
since.

Daily Production Report (DPR) to including all terms and definitions

in ISO 15926. This standard was tested successfully on the Valhall
(BP-operated) and sgard (StatoilHydro-operated) fields offshore
Norway. The terminology and XML schemata developed have also
been included in Energistics PRODML standard.

Some technical background

One of the main requirements was (and still is) that the scope of the data model covers
the entire lifecycle of a facility (e.g. oil refinery) and its components (e.g. pipes,
pumps and their parts, etc.). Since such a facility over such a long time entails many
different types of activities on a myriad of different objects it became clear that a
generic and data-driven data model would be required.
A simple example will illustrate this. There are thousands of different types of
physical objects in a facility (pumps, compressors, pipes, instruments, fluids, etc).
Each of these has many properties. If all combinations would be modelled in a "hardcoded" fashion, the number of combinations would be staggering, and unmanageable.
The solution is a "template" that represents the semantics of: "This object has a
property of X yyyy" (where yyyy is the unit of measure). Any instance of that
template refers to the applicable reference data:

physical object (e.g. my Induction Motor)

indirect property type (e.g. the class "cold locked rotor time")
base property type (here: time)
scale (here: seconds)
Without being able to make reference to those classes, via the Internet, it will be
impossible to express this information.

References
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because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article
by introducing more precise citations. (May 2012)

ISO 15926-1:2004 Industrial automation systems and integrationIntegration

of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production
facilitiesPart 1: Overview and fundamental principles
ISO 15926-2:2003 Industrial automation systems and integrationIntegration
of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas production
facilitiesPart 2: Data model
ISO/TS 15926-4:2007 Industrial automation systems and integration
Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas
production facilitiesPart 4: Initial reference data
ISO/TS 15926-7:2011 Industrial automation systems and integration
Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas
production facilitiesPart 7: Template methodology
ISO/TS 15926-8:2011 Industrial automation systems and integration
Integration of life-cycle data for process plants including oil and gas
production facilitiesPart 8: Web Ontology Language (OWL)
implementation

1. ^ The Norwegian Oil Industry Association (OLF). "Integrated Operations and

the Oil and Gas Ontology". Retrieved 2009-05-06.
2. ^ Norwegian Petroleum Directorate. "Drilling Reporting to the authorities".
Retrieved 2009-05-05.