Alarm management system

A method of alarm management for process signals produced by process control sensors, said method comprising the steps of:

• (a) producing abnormality indication signals, from the process signals, indicative of the state of the controlled process;
• (b) producing written abnormality messages, for a plurality of functions, from the abnormality indication signals in accordance with functions of the controlled process, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the messages including goal violation category messages indicating whether a goal of the function is being satisfied, process disturbance category messages indicating whether the processes necessary to perform the function are operating properly and process unavailability category messsages indicaitng whether processes not currently active could work if needed;
• (c) sorting the respective category messages in accordance with a local priority and storing the messages in category queues;
• (d) displaying in spatially dedicated function locations a portion of the goal violation category messages, process disturbance category messages and process unavailability category messages having the highest priority;
• and
• (e) displaying the messages in the queue on a serial display by priority within category when requested.

An alarm management system, comprising:

• a light water pressurized nuclear power plant;
• sensors coupled to said light water pressurized nuclear power plant and producing sensor signals indicating the state of said light water pressurized nuclear power plant;
• a sensor signal processor, operatively connected to said sensors, for producing state signals indicating the state of the sensors monitoring the power plant from the sensor signals and for combining the state signals using rule based algorithms to produce abnormality indication signals;
• a message processor, operatively connected to said sensor signal processor, for receiving the abnormality indication signals, generating, for a plurality of functions, written function-category messages describing the abnormal condition associated with the respective abnormality indicating signal, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the messages being associated with the goals of the function, processes necessary for the function and support necessary for the function, sorting the messages into goal violation, process disturbance and process unavailability category messages within each function, and ranking the messages in each category in dependence upon a predetermined local priority, outputting a portion of the messages with the highest priority and retaining the messages in priority order within category within function in category queues;
• a spatially dedicated parallel display for each function, operatively connected to said message processor, for displaying the portion of the messages simultaneously;
• and
• a serial display, operatively connected to said message processor, for displaying the message in the queues in priority order within category within function upon request, said message processor outputting messages from the queue to said parallel display as display space becomes available on said parallel display due to an abnormality being resolved.

A method of alarm management, said method comprising the steps of:

• (a) sampling sensors in a pressurized light water nuclear power plant to produce signals;
• (b) producing abnormality indication signals, from the process signals, indicative of the state of the power plant;
• (c) producing, for a plurality of functions, written abnormality messages from the abnormality indication signals in accordance with functions of the power plant, the messages corresponding to the functions, each function being subdivided into a plurality of categories and each category having a plurality of messages, the abnormality messages being produced by category within the function and including goal violation category messages idnicating whether a goal of the function is being obtained, process disturbance category messages indicating whether processes necessary to the function are operating properly and process unavailability category messages indicating whether a process not currently active could work if needed;
• (d) sorting the respective messages in accordance with a local severity priority within category within function and storing the messages in category queues;
• (e) displaying in spatially dedicated function locations a portion of the goal violation messages, process disturbance messages and process unavailability messages having the highest priority, where messages of equal rank within each category within each function are displayed chronologically ;
• (f) displaying the category queues serially in priority order by category within function upon request;
• and
• (g) moving messages from the category queues into the respective spatially dedicated function locations display space becomes available at the respective spatially dedicated function location due to an abnormality being resolved.