Cathodic protection (CP) is a technical process that has been established for decades to protect buried steel pipelines against corrosion and thus significantly extend their technical service life.

Based on CP operation, the current condition of the pipeline coating can be evaluated as a basis for a condition-based maintenance strategy and for detecting dangerous foreign contacts with the pipeline.

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to evaluate the CP measurements significantly reduces the time and manpower required for regular evaluation of the remote monitoring data and enables statements to be made about the integrity of the pipeline coating that would not be possible without the use of AI. This results in completely new application possibilities with a focus on the detection and localization of dangerous third-party contacts with the pipeline.