SITE AND ALARM PRIORITIZATION SYSTEM

• US 20110298608A1
• Filed: 06/02/2010
• Published: 12/08/2011
• Est. Priority Date: 06/02/2010
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Original Assignee: Honeywell International Inc.
• Inventors: Ranjan, Prabhat, Kiff, Liana Maria, Gall, Thomas, Chetia, Barnali, Lawry, Jeff, Berlot, Michele
• Granted Patent: US 8,890,675 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 340/519
• CPC Class Codes: G05B 23/0272 Presentation of monitored results, e.g. selection of status reports to be displayed; Filtering information to the user
• CPC Class Codes: G08B 25/005 Alarm destination chosen according to a hierarchy of available destinations, e.g. if hospital does not answer send to police station

Abstract

An approach for site prioritization and then a review and prioritization of the alarms at the site. A feature may to first find the site most in need of attention and then check the alarms of that site. A rule algorithm may determine a prioritization of site according to primitive rules which can be customized and modified nearly at any time making site priority a dynamic determination. At the site, the alarms may be ordered by criticality.

Claims

1. A site prioritization approach comprising:

providing a filter having a priority scenario;

applying the filter to a system of sites to arrange the sites into a list according to the priority scenario applying an order of priority with a site having a highest priority at a top of the list;

doing an alarm review of the site at the top of the list to select out any existing active alarm or alarms of the site;

silencing the existing active alarm or alarms by taking appropriate action; and

re-evaluating a priority of the site having the active alarm or alarms which were silenced; and

wherein re-evaluating the priority pulls the last acted upon site having no longer an active alarm from the top of the list and places the site lower in the list.

2. The approach of claim 1, further comprising doing an alarm review of another site at the top of the list.

3. The approach of claim 1, wherein the priority scenario is created from predefined primitive rules.

4. The approach of claim 1, wherein the order of priority is according to a level of urgency and criticality.

5. The approach of claim 4, wherein the order of priority is provided by a sort-ordering algorithm.

6. The approach of claim 1, wherein the filter is selected from a routing group or ad hoc filters.

7. The approach of claim 3, wherein a background thread re-evaluates the priority of a site having the alarm or alarms silenced, by re-evaluating the predefined primitive rules.

8. The approach of claim 3, wherein an overlapping priority of numerous sites in the list is resolved by a priority algorithm which selects and assigns a maximum priority to just one of the numerous sites.

9. The approach of claim 3, wherein the predefined primitive rules are based on:

site level attributes;

alarm statistics;

alarm patterns;

equipment data;

date and time information;

a service level agreement; and

/or

urgency.

10. The approach of claim 9, wherein site level attributes comprise:

site location;

site weather data;

site area;

site type; and

/or

site occupied versus non-occupied time.

11. The approach of claim 9, wherein alarm statistics comprise:

a number of unacknowledged alarms;

a number of acknowledged alarms;

a number of unresolved alarms;

a number of escalated alarms

a number of high priority alarms;

a number of medium priority alarms;

a number of low priority alarms;

a last critical alarm; and

/or

a latest occurred time of an alarm.

12. The approach of claim 9, wherein equipment data comprise:

a number of equipment modules at a site;

a type of equipment at the site; and

/or

health of the equipment.

13. The approach of claim 9, wherein alarm patterns comprise:

a number of critical alarms in a given past period of time;

a number of nuisance alarms in a given past period of time; and

/or

a number of alarms grouped by modules at a site in a given past period of time.

14. The approach of claim 9, wherein date and time information comprise:

a day in a week;

a holiday season or non-holiday season;

a spring, summer, fall or winter season; and

/or

a time of day.

15. A site and alarm management system comprising:

a routing group or filter selected from a list of groups and filters, by a first selection algorithm;

a site list resulting from application of the routing group or filter to a portfolio of sites;

a most critical site at top of the site list, wherein the most critical site is selected by a second selection algorithm; and

alarms from the most critical site, listed in an order by a third selection algorithm, are evaluated and active alarms are cleared, resulting in the most critical site being no longer the most critical site on the site list.

16. The system of claim 15, further comprising another most critical site on the site list treated in a similar manner as a previous most critical site.

17. The system of claim 16, wherein:

the second selection algorithm selects the most critical site according to alarm statistics and urgency;

the third selection algorithm lists the alarms from the most critical site in the order according to a priority and logged time stamp; and

the active alarms are cleared with diagnosis and resolution.

18. A site prioritization mechanism comprising:

a filter;

a site list resulting from an application of the filter to sites in a system;

a most critical site placed at a top of the site list is selected according to primitive rules; and

alarms from the most critical site are listed according to an order, wherein active alarms of the site are cleared, resulting in the most critical site being no longer the most critical site being at the top of the site list.

19. The mechanism of claim 18, further comprising;

any subsequent most critical site selected from the top of the site list; and

alarms from the any subsequent most critical site are listed according to an order, wherein active alarms of the site are cleared, resulting in the any subsequent most critical site being no longer the most critical site being at the top of the site list.

20. The mechanism of claim 19, wherein:

primitive rules are based on;

site level attributes;

alarm statistics;

alarm patterns;

equipment data;

date and time information;

a service level agreement; and

/or

urgency;

the order is based on priority and a logged time stamp; and

active alarms are cleared with diagnosis and resolution.