Alarm response guidance and usage system

This paper reports on alarm response and usage system. There are currently hundreds of annunciators in a power plant control room, supplemented by hundreds of pages of alarm response procedures. It is extremely difficult for an operator to ascertain quickly the cause of an abnormality and react to it when several annunciators are active. In addition, even in the case when only one or two alarm tiles are active, the root cause of the problem may be unknown to the operator. If his response is delayed, a plant trip or equipment damage may result. Control system malfunctions may also create an abnormal condition, and simply placing the system in manual may mitigate the event. Again, if action is not taken quickly enough, a plant trip may occur