Event Detection for Industrial Automation Mobile Notifications
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Solution Overview
Problem
Industrial process control and automation systems face challenges in providing timely and comprehensive mobile notifications to users, especially from sources that are not natively configured to provide event information, limiting situational awareness and responsiveness outside of control rooms.
Innovation Solution
An apparatus and method for event detection that uses configurable queries to obtain information from multiple sources within industrial process control and automation systems, processing this information to generate notifications for mobile end-user devices, even from sources not natively capable of providing event data, through a notification server that implements a general-purpose event detection component.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Adaptability or versatility
If event information is obtained only from sources natively configured to provide event data, then system complexity is reduced, but event detection coverage and completeness deteriorate
Solution Approach 1:
The patent introduces an intermediary component (event detection service/query mechanism) that mediates between diverse data sources and the notification system. This intermediary translates and standardizes events from various sources including those not natively configured for event provision, thereby expanding detection coverage without proportionally increasing overall system complexity.
Solution Approach 2:
The notification system implements a universal event detection mechanism that can handle multiple types of data sources through a common interface. The system uses configurable queries that can adapt to different source types (databases, APIs, log files, etc.), allowing one system to serve multiple functions and extract events from any configured source without requiring separate specialized systems for each source type.
2Adaptability or versatility
If configurable queries are used to obtain information from multiple sources, then event detection capability is improved, but information processing time and computational resources increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system performs preliminary actions by pre-configuring query templates and event detection rules before actual event detection occurs. Data sources are pre-connected and query structures are prepared in advance, allowing the system to quickly execute standardized queries rather than building and optimizing queries in real-time, thereby reducing processing time while maintaining comprehensive detection capability.
3Loss of information
If comprehensive event information is collected from all available sources, then situational awareness is improved, but data processing complexity and storage requirements increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts only the essential event information needed for situational awareness from comprehensive data sources. Rather than processing and storing all available data, the query mechanism selectively extracts relevant events based on configured criteria, filtering out redundant or low-value information. This extraction approach maintains complete situational awareness of critical events while reducing data processing complexity and storage requirements.
Data Source
AI summary
A method includes obtaining information associated with multiple events in an industrial process control and automation system, where the information is obtained from one or more sources of data related to the industrial process control and automation system. The method also includes outputting the information to a notification system configured to generate multiple notifications for mobile end-user devices using the retrieved information. Obtaining the information associated with the multiple events includes using one or more queries to obtain at least part of the information from at least one of the one or more sources. The one or more queries support detection of events from the at least one source that is not configured or able to provide event information to the notification system.