Guidance for optimising operator plant situational awareness by rationalising control room alarms

This publication provides accessible guidance to organisations interested in improving existing control room alarm systems or designing new ones. It acts as a companion guide to EEMUA 191, summarising and organising relevant available guidance on how to conduct an alarm rationalisation (to reduce the number of alarms) and discusses why factors other than the number of alarms should be considered when attempting to improve alarm system performance. It then provides a practical methodology and tool by which organisations can assess (and address) the human factors aspects of high-priority alarms, in order to ensure the alarms help, rather than hinder, the operator’s situation awareness.