Alarm suppression and shelving in SCADA systems - Mini Project: Build & Apply

Alarm Suppression and Shelving in SCADA Systems

📖 Scenario: You work as a technician managing alarms in a SCADA system for a water treatment plant. Sometimes, alarms need to be temporarily ignored or delayed to avoid unnecessary alerts during maintenance or known issues.

🎯 Goal: Build a simple program that manages alarms by suppressing and shelving them. You will create a list of active alarms, add a suppression configuration, apply shelving to alarms based on that configuration, and finally display the updated alarm states.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a list of active alarms with exact names and states

Add a suppression configuration variable to control shelving duration

Write logic to shelve alarms that match suppression criteria

Print the final list of alarms with their updated states

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

In real SCADA systems, operators need to temporarily suppress or shelve alarms during maintenance or known issues to avoid alarm flooding and focus on critical alerts.

💼 Career

Understanding alarm suppression and shelving is important for SCADA technicians and engineers to maintain system reliability and reduce operator fatigue.

1

Create the list of active alarms

Create a list called active_alarms with these exact dictionaries representing alarms: {'id': 101, 'name': 'High Pressure', 'state': 'active'}, {'id': 102, 'name': 'Low Flow', 'state': 'active'}, {'id': 103, 'name': 'Power Failure', 'state': 'active'}.

SCADA systems

# Create the list active_alarms with the specified alarm dictionaries
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a list with three dictionaries exactly as shown.

2

Add suppression duration configuration

Create a variable called shelving_duration_minutes and set it to 30 to represent how long alarms should be shelved.

SCADA systems

active_alarms = [
    {'id': 101, 'name': 'High Pressure', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 102, 'name': 'Low Flow', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 103, 'name': 'Power Failure', 'state': 'active'}
]
# Create shelving_duration_minutes and set it to 30
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just create a variable with the exact name and value.

3

Shelve alarms based on suppression criteria

Use a for loop with variable alarm to iterate over active_alarms. If alarm['name'] is either 'Low Flow' or 'Power Failure', change alarm['state'] to 'shelved'.

SCADA systems

active_alarms = [
    {'id': 101, 'name': 'High Pressure', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 102, 'name': 'Low Flow', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 103, 'name': 'Power Failure', 'state': 'active'}
]
shelving_duration_minutes = 30
# Shelve alarms named 'Low Flow' or 'Power Failure' by setting their state to 'shelved'
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Use a for loop and check alarm names exactly as shown.

4

Display the updated alarm states

Write a print statement to display the active_alarms list.

SCADA systems

active_alarms = [
    {'id': 101, 'name': 'High Pressure', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 102, 'name': 'Low Flow', 'state': 'active'},
    {'id': 103, 'name': 'Power Failure', 'state': 'active'}
]
shelving_duration_minutes = 30
for alarm in active_alarms:
    if alarm['name'] in ['Low Flow', 'Power Failure']:
        alarm['state'] = 'shelved'
# Print the active_alarms list
# Your code here

Need a hint?

Just print the active_alarms list to see updated states.