Machine Learning Methods for Alarm Prediction in Industrial Informatics: Review and Benchmark

Abstract

Alarm systems are important assets for plant safety and efficiency in a variety of industries, including power and utility, process and manufacturing, oil and gas, and communications. Especially in the process-based industry, alarm systems collect a huge amount of data in the field that requires operators to take action carefully. However, existing industrial alarm systems suffer from poor performance, mostly with alarm overloading and alarm flooding. Therefore, this problem creates an opportunity to implement machine learning models in order to predict upcoming alarms in the industry. In this way, the operators can take the necessary actions automatically while they are using their capacity for other unpredicted alarms. This study provides an overview of alarm prediction methods used in industrial alarm systems with the context of their classification types. In addition, a comparative analysis was conducted between two state-of-the-art deep learning models, namely Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) and Transformer, through a benchmarking process. The experimental results of both models were evaluated and contrasted to identify their respective strengths and weaknesses. Moreover, this study identifies research gaps in alarm prediction, which can guide future research for better alarm management systems.