High Consequence Area (HCA)

A high consequence area is a location along a pipeline route - typically a populated area, a body of water used for drinking supply, or an ecologically sensitive zone - where a failure would have disproportionately severe consequences, and where regulators correspondingly require more rigorous and more frequent integrity assessment. HCA designation is one of the primary inputs into risk-based inspection prioritisation: two segments with identical corrosion rates can carry very different regulatory and practical urgency depending on what sits above or beside them. Identifying and keeping HCA designations current as land use changes around a pipeline is itself an ongoing data problem.