Rule-based reduction of alarm signals in industrial control

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Ahnlund, Jonas | Bergquist, Tord | Spaanenburg, Lambert

Affiliations: Department of Information Technology, Lund University of Technology, P.O. Box 118, 221 00 Lund, Sweden

Note: [] Corresponding author. Tel.: +46 46 222 7505; Fax: +46 46 222 4714; E-mail: jonas.ahnlund@it.lth.se

Abstract: The proper handling of alarms is crucial to any automated process control. In practice, many alarms are only distractive and do not represent a potentially dangerous situation. This paper presents a methodology and a computerized tool that aims to remove such nuisance alarms, a so-called alarm cleanup. This is a general, systematic approach that takes advantage of the control system's built-in functions, and is a first step to an improved overall alarm situation. By the strong reduction of the alarm count, the efficient construction of fault diagnosis and isolation models becomes feasible. In a typical case study, the number of alarms received at the remote control room of an operational bio-fueled District Heating Plant was effectively reduced by 83%.

Keywords: process control, fault diagnosis, alarm cleanup, expert system, signal processing, multilevel flow model

Journal: Journal of Intelligent & Fuzzy Systems, vol. 14, no. 2, pp. 73-84, 2003