Web-based national corrosion cost inventory system for Saudi Arabia

Purpose: The present work developed a national web-based corrosion cost inventory system for the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which can be used by any nation with little bit of customization. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach: The proposed system is designed to be divided into five major sectors namely, utilities, transportation, infrastructure, government, and production and manufacturing. Each of these major sectors is having further sub-sectors and then blown down to the industry and specific identity. The web-based application is developed using Dotnet on SQL server. The corrosion cost estimation procedures and corrosion rates in different sectors and sub-sectors have been adapted from the literature. Findings: The proposed developed system will enable end-users to provide corrosion and cost-related data through web-based online system. The input information from end-users will be authenticated by a corrosion auditor before finally entering into the database tables. The system is also capable of generating reports related to corrosion cost which the nation is paying with further details of corrosion costs borne by each sector and sub-sector. These reports will be helpful in making decision to identify the sector and sub-sectors which are more prone to corrosion and consuming more money to combat corrosion. Finally, the sectors and sub-sectors that are identified through the proposed system could be put under thrust research areas to combat corrosion problem and hence reduce the corrosion cost burden in future. Originality/value: To the best of authors' knowledge, this is the first attempt on providing a web-based corrosion cost inventory system on national basis which could be adapted by any nation with some customization. It is flexible and can be expanded as the need may arise.