A computer-implemented method for determining an operational state of an industrial plant includes acquiring alarms raised within the plant and adding them to a pool of important alarms, determining whether a physical state of the plant indicated by a first alarm causes a second alarm or meets a predetermined state-dependent condition and, if so, moving the first alarm to a pool of informative alarms; and determining the operational state of the plant and/or a corrective action for improving this operational state based on the alarms in the pool of important alarms.

Contextual rendering systems, methods, and computer-readable media include circuitry configured to parse a graphics file into a plurality of graphics objects, determine whether one or more dynamic behavior attributes are present for each graphics object, extract at least one tag name for each graphics object having the one or more dynamic behavior attributes, assign an attribute weight to each dynamic behavior attribute, compute a sum of the attribute weights for each tag name-graphics object combination, rank each of the tag name-graphics object combinations according to the respective computed sum, and display a portion of a graphics view of one or more graphics objects for a first-ranked tag name-graphics object combination in context with other graphics objects.

An industrial automation system that allows for communication between an operator and a processing unit, which includes contextual information, such as data, and retrieval of historical messages, for a processing unit when abnormal operational conditions are encountered, resulting in faster responses and more complete information to address the abnormal condition.

An apparatus for alarm information determination includes: an input unit; a processing unit; and an output unit. The input unit provides the processing unit with historical process control data, the process control data including a plurality of data signals, a plurality of alarm data, and data relating to an event of interest. The processing unit determines a plurality of correlation scores for the plurality of data signals paired with the plurality of alarm data, a correlation score being determined for a data signal paired with an alarm data, a high correlation score indicating a higher degree of correlation than a low correlation score. The processing unit identifies at least one first alarm data from the plurality of alarm data, the identification including utilization of the data relating to the event of interest.

Apparatus and methods for alert management in instrumentation are disclosed. An example method includes generating a set of alerts within a process control instrument, processing the set of alerts to compare the set of alerts to known combinations of alerts, determining if one of the known combinations of alerts matches the set of alerts based on the comparison of the set of alerts to the known combinations of alerts, and identifying a recommended action instruction based on the determination.

An alarm management apparatus of the present disclosure presents a trigger alarm, which should be presented to an operator, to the operator when the trigger alarm is included in an alarm that is received or generated. The alarm management apparatus stores a suppressed alarm related to the trigger alarm, without presenting the suppressed alarm to the operator, when the suppressed alarm is included in the alarm and presents the stored suppressed alarm to the operator based on an operation by the operator.

An industrial automation system that allows for communication between an operator and a processing unit, which includes contextual information, such as data, and retrieval of historical messages, for a processing unit when abnormal operational conditions are encountered, resulting in faster responses and more complete information to address the abnormal condition.

A method for sorting alarm-messages of a plant having at least one alarm-area each having at least two plant-devices connected by at least one connection, wherein the at least one alarm-area is defined so that the plant-devices and the respective connection provide a directed graph, involves: providing at least one database containing alarm-data and topology-data; wherein the topology-data describe a directed graph having at least one connection with a related flow direction between the respective plant-devices of the respective assigned alarm-area; generating at least one partly complete first alarm-order of the alarm-messages of the at least one alarm-area by sorting the alarm-messages according to the flow direction of the directed graph.

Apparatus and methods for alert management in instrumentation are disclosed. An example method includes generating a set of alerts within a process control instrument, processing the set of alerts to compare the set of alerts to known combinations of alerts, determining if one of the known combinations of alerts matches the set of alerts based on the comparison of the set of alerts to the known combinations of alerts, and identifying a recommended action instruction based on the determination.

A computer-implemented method for determining an operational state of an industrial plant includes acquiring alarms raised within the plant and adding them to a pool of important alarms, determining whether a physical state of the plant indicated by a first alarm causes a second alarm or meets a predetermined state-dependent condition and, if so, moving the first alarm to a pool of informative alarms; and determining the operational state of the plant and/or a corrective action for improving this operational state based on the alarms in the pool of important alarms.