Reducing SCADA System Nuisance Alarms in the Water Industry in Northern Ireland

The advancement of telemetry control for the water industry has increased the difficulty of managing large volumes of nuisance alarms (i.e., alarms that do not require a response). The aim of this study was to identify and reduce the number of nuisance alarms that occur for Northern Ireland (NI) Water by carrying out alarm duration analysis to determine the appropriate length of persistence (an advanced alarm management tool) that could be applied. All data were extracted from TelemWeb (NI Water's telemetry monitoring system) and analyzed in Excel. Over a 6-week period, an average of 40 000 alarms occurred per week. The alarm duration analysis, which has never been implemented before by NI Water, found that an average of 57% of NI Water alarms had a duration of <5 minutes. Applying 5-minute persistence, therefore, could prevent an average 26 816 nuisance alarms per week. Most of these alarms were from wastewater assets.