Alarm Aggregation Rules for Hierarchical Device Alarm Avalanches
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Solution Overview
Problem
Conventional industrial monitoring systems and data center monitoring systems face challenges in efficiently managing and reporting alarms, particularly when dealing with large hierarchies of coupled subsystems and components, leading to 'alarm avalanches' due to cascading anomalous events.
Innovation Solution
A method and system for automatically generating and configuring alarm aggregation rules using a computer system, which identifies the origin device and associated alarms within an electrical distribution hierarchy, allowing for the aggregation and reporting of alarms as a group, enabling targeted notifications and corrective actions.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Loss of information
If conventional monitoring systems report all alarms individually from each device, then complete information about system status is provided, but alarm complexity and reporting burden increase significantly leading to alarm avalanches
Solution Approach 1:
The patent merges multiple individual alarms from devices within the same hierarchical group into a single aggregated alarm notification. When an alarm occurs at any device level, the system automatically consolidates it with other alarms from parent and child devices in the hierarchy, presenting them as one unified notification that preserves complete alarm information while reducing reporting complexity and preventing alarm avalanches.
2Measurement precision
If alarm aggregation rules are manually configured for each device hierarchy, then accurate alarm grouping is achieved, but configuration time and effort increase significantly
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs self-service by automatically generating alarm aggregation rules based on the pre-defined device hierarchies. Instead of requiring manual configuration of aggregation rules for each device group, the system autonomously analyzes the hierarchical relationships and creates appropriate aggregation rules, thereby maintaining high alarm grouping accuracy while eliminating time-consuming manual configuration efforts.
Solution Approach 2:
The patent applies preliminary action by establishing device hierarchies in advance before alarm aggregation is needed. These pre-defined hierarchical structures serve as the foundation for automatic rule generation, allowing the system to quickly create accurate aggregation rules without manual intervention when alarms need to be consolidated, thus reducing configuration time while maintaining precision.
3Loss of information
If detailed information about each alarm source is provided in every notification, then complete diagnostic information is available, but notification volume and processing burden increase
Solution Approach 1:
The patent combines multiple alarm notifications into a single aggregated notification that includes comprehensive diagnostic information from all source devices. The aggregated alarm preserves detailed information about each alarm source, its status, and hierarchical relationships while presenting them in one consolidated notification, thereby maintaining complete diagnostic information while improving response efficiency by reducing notification volume and processing burden.
Data Source
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AI summary
According to another embodiment, a system for generating alarm aggregation rules is provided. The system includes a memory and at least one processor coupled to the memory. The at least one processor is configured to receive information descriptive of a set of devices, each device within the set having one or more devices within the set that are associated with the device and each device of the set being capable of entering at least one anomalous state; identify at least one type of alarm aggregation rule that applies to at least one device within the set based on one or more anomalous states that the at least one device is capable of entering; and store an association between an alarm aggregation rule of the at least one type and the set of devices.