SCA - what?

This means that you have a special little thingy attached to a pipe full of high pressure gas or oil, that can tell you about the stuff inside the pipe.

Then you take a piece of wire and connect this thingy to a little computer that is conected to a whole lot of other little thingys that do other clever things - like open a valve, or turn on a pump.

Then you stick some data communications equipment onto this little computer and perhaps even a honking great big radio mast and connect it to a big computer in a nice big air-conditioned server room.

This big computer is also connected to other little computers scattered around the country. And what you end up with is a big network that starts with a few powerfull computers at the top, and ends up at hundreds of thousands of devices in the field scattered all over Western Venezuela.

The big computer is also connected to other big computers. All together, this is called a SCADA system.

This particular SCADA system is very, very big. I think around 26 big computers controlling about half a million devices in the field.