Abstract:

Alarming plays an important role of reminding to ensure a safety operation in the process industries. However, overwhelming alarm signals bring confusion to operators and prevent them from obtaining key information and making decisions to take proper actions. Multiple alarm signals are not independent, there exists relationship among them. A method of identifying this relationship from historical alarm data is proposed. According to the occurrence time of two alarms, the relationship between them can be determined as well as the sequence and causal intensity. Based on the relationship between each pair of alarm variables, a relationship topology can be built to describe the relationship among multiple alarms. This method can be used for smart alarm management and provide technical support to improve the guiding value of alarm signals.

Key words: alarm;smart alarm management;relationship;topology