Industrial plant alarm management

A method for monitoring an industrial automation system comprising:

• operating the automation system by executing a plurality of control processes with an electronic controller, each of the plurality of control processes being configured to control one or more physical elements of the automation system;
• determining, with the electronic controller:
• a sequence of alarm events for each of a plurality of time intervals during execution of the plurality of control processes using an alarm event database, one of the sequences of alarm events including a first alarm event of a plurality of alarm events and a second alarm event of the plurality of alarm events,
• a first count of the first alarm event,
• a second count of the second alarm event,
• whether the first count and the second count exceed a support threshold value corresponding to a minimum number of alarm event occurrences,
• a third count of a sub-sequence of the sequences of alarm events including the first alarm event followed by the second alarm event in response to determining the first count and the second count exceeds the support threshold value, and
• a ratio including the first count, the second count, and the third count exceeds a display threshold value;
• and
• displaying the sub-sequence on an operator-perceptual display using a plurality of visual alarm components to represent the first alarm event and the second alarm event.