Study of Advanced Alarm Systems

BNL alarm system research (see description of the Annunciator Project ) identified issues related to advanced alarm system design. The primary purpose of this project was to evaluate the impact of alarm system design characteristics related to priority issues on plant and operator performance in order to contribute to the understanding of potential safety issues and to provide data to support the development of design review guidance in these areas.

An experiment was performed using a full-mission, dynamic nuclear plant simulator. Three alarm system design factors were evaluated:

• processing methods
• availability of processing results
• alarm display format

These aspects of alarm design are discussed below followed by a listing of the specific test objectives of this research. Alarm processing refers to the alarm analysis conducted before presentation of data to operators. The degree of alarm reduction achieved is a function of the alarm processing techniques that are applied. For the purposes of this study, alarm processing methods were employed that are representative of near-term applications, and therefore, near-term regulatory review considerations.

The second alarm system design characteristic under investigation was availability. The differential effects of two types of alarm availability, suppression and dynamic prioritization, were evaluated. Finally, alarm display design was evaluated. Display type refers to the mode by which alarm information is presented to the operator. Three primary types of alarm displays were compared: a dedicated "tile-like" format, a mixed tile- and-message list format, and a format in which alarm information is integrated into the process displays. These display formats enabled the examination of two aspects of alarm display design: spatial dedication and degree of integration with process information.

Last Modified: February 1, 2008

One of ten national laboratories overseen and primarily funded by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Brookhaven National Laboratory conducts research in the physical, biomedical, and environmental sciences, as well as in energy technologies and national security. Brookhaven Lab also builds and operates major scientific facilities available to university, industry and government researchers. Brookhaven is operated and managed for DOE's Office of Science by Brookhaven Science Associates, a limited-liability company founded by the Research Foundation for the State University of New York on behalf of Stony Brook University, the largest academic user of Laboratory facilities, and Battelle, a nonprofit, applied science and technology organization.

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