CATEGORY: PROCESS CONTROL
Journal of Process Control, Volume 23, Issue 6,
July 2013, Pages 839–851
A
combined analysis of plant connectivity and alarm logs to reduce the number of
alerts in an automation system
Markus Schleburg (a,b), Lars Christiansen (a), Nina F. Thornhill
(b), Alexander Fay (a)
a Institute of Automation Technology, Helmut-Schmidt-University/University of
the Federal Armed Forces, Holstenhofweg 85, D-22043 Hamburg, Germany
b Centre for Process System Engineering, Department of Chemical Engineering,
Imperial College London, London SW7 2AZ, UK
Abstract
A
process alarm occurs when normal operation limits are exceeded and an alarm
management system alerts the operator of a process plant. Unfortunately,
because of the material, energy and information flow in a plant, single
disturbances can cause multiple alarm messages, which may overload the operator
by presenting many redundant alarms.
This situation, known as an ‘alarm flood’, may make it impossible
for the operator to keep the plant within safe operation limits and to find the
root cause of the disturbance. Authors propose a method designed to reduce the
number of alerts presented to the operator. If alarms are related to one
another, they should be grouped and presented as one alarm problem. For the
implementation of the concept, authors have constructed a software prototype to
perform this reduction automatically. The analysis process begins with the
alarm history, which is a log containing all past alarm messages. This is
combined with the plant topology of the controlled system and a set of rules.
The rules describe typical interrelations between alarm messages which have a
common cause. The combination of these three elements yields an effective alarm
management strategy that can help plant owners and operators to comply with
standards for alarm management.
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