Process Alarm Modeling Using Graph Theory: Alarm Design Review and Rationalization

Abstract

Investigations into process accidents have identified that flaws in alarm management systems are a major contributing factor to these accidents. Poor alarm system design can lead to alarm flooding, loss of situation awareness, and poor decision-making, causing unnecessary shutdowns, or further escalation of the abnormal situations. A review of research literature suggests that there appears to be limited methods available to help analysts evaluate alarm system design and to prioritize and rationalize alarms in a manner that promotes operators' situation awareness and correct decision-making. This article documents the first part of the research which aims to develop a means to rationalize defined alarms in operations through use of the causal modeling approach that is linked with the graph modeling technique that involves graph analytics to provide metrics to evaluate the alarm system performance. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the research findings and makes recommendations about further research required to fully develop an alarm system that use prioritization and rationalization to improve the operator's situation awareness and responses during abnormal operating situations.