Prioritize Alarms

During periods of high activity, a control system can generate a large number of alarms within a short period of time. If you prioritize the alarms in your Plant SCADA system, you can indicate to an operator which alarms they should address first.

There are two things to consider when you plan alarm priorities:

• The severity of the consequence that could occur if the operator does not take the appropriate corrective action to the alarm

• The amount of time that the operator has available, compared to the amount of time that it would take to perform a corrective action.

Alarm management standards provide guidelines on how to effectively prioritize alarms in a control system. For example, the EEUMA 191 standard recommends that three alarm priorities should be used within one alarm display.

However, if your control system incorporates more than one alarm system (for example, if your site includes a separate fire or gas alarm panel), it is recommended that the alarm priorities you use are consistent with any existing systems.

Alarm priorities are managed in Plant SCADA through alarm categories. Each alarm category can be assigned a priority value (from 1 to 255), which can be used to determine the order in which alarms are displayed, acknowledged and enabled.

If required, you can configure optional display properties for an alarm priority that will allow you to:

• Specify a name for a priority value to provide a meaningful representation of its purpose.

• Define background and foreground colors that provide a visual representation of priority on a graphics page.

• Associate Genies with a priority that you can use as an alarm flag or icon.

These additional properties are configured in the Setup activity (see Configure Display Properties for an Alarm Priority).

You can also Create Priority and State Symbols for an Alarms List.

See Also

Categorize Alarms