A New Method for As-built Burial Risk Assessment for Subsea Cables

A new method using burial measurements for risk assessment of subsea cable installations is proposed. Only methods comparing the design boundaries have previously been used to verify subsea cable installments. The disadvantage of utilizing design boundaries is the possibility of not fulfilling the risk requirements since the assumed burial depth of the cable and its measurement data can differ, leading to the challenge of assessing how the difference and its uncertainty affect burial risk. We proposed and tested the method for a scenario using seagoing vessel traffic data and sensor characteristics. The analysis is limited to white measurement noise but shows a deviation in risk estimation between the design- and measurement-based assessments. The presented result enables the approximation of the risk assessment for projects of varying specifications. The proposed statistical method is a less conservative way to assess the correct installment of a cable and possibly to evaluate verification specifications.