Curvaceous award targets alarm management

London – UK technology company Curvaceous Software Ltd has been awarded a development grant from the South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) to focus on the management and control of alarms. The grant was awarded by Finance South East, on behalf of SEEDA, following a rigorous appraisal process against criteria including the level of technological advance and risk.

Curvaceous’ current research work is based on its geometric process control (GPC) technology and software products. These include its Visual Explorerprogramme that lets users view hundreds of process variables and their alarm limits in a single graph, and Process Modeller, which lets you view the process operating envelope in a ’you-are-here’ position in real-time. 

The Curvaceous research team will utilise GPC’s capabilities to develop new techniques to eliminate alarm floods and provide the plant operator with what they need in an emergency - namely the annunciation of only the most significant alarms at a rate they can handle.

The research grant from SEEDA, which recognises our unique specialism in alarm management and control, said Robin Brooks, MD of Curvaceous. “Our aim is to transform alarm systems so that they are truly valued, useful when most needed and most importantly, contribute to solving the problem instead of becoming the distraction that they so often are today.”

Curvaceous recently launched Visual Explorer 2.5 and enhancements to Process Modeller that deliver Consistent HiLo Alarm Limits & Alerts starting from the behavioural information buried in process history data rather than alarm log data. Benefits are said to include minimum time savings of 20% to perform Alarm Review Meetings and a reduction in engineering time for on-going change management, as well as better-managed processes where alarms and alerts..