Intelligent surveillance for naval nuclear submarine propulsion

This paper describes the work undertaken by Rolls-Royce and Associates Ltd (RRA) to develop an intelligent knowledge based system (IKBS) to improve surveillance of a UK naval nuclear submarine propulsion plant. Modern process plants have exhibited increasing levels of automation, coupled with a reduction in the level of manpower operating and monitoring the plant. The surveillance systems installed to date have been less helpful than anticipated. These systems tend to supply high volumes of information that result in a high workload being placed upon control room operators, who have effectively lost the data reduction and warning filtering expertise inherent in local plant operators. RRA has considered ways to improve plant surveillance conditions by supplying operators with manageable amounts of high quality information. A development programme was initiated in 1992 to introduce an IKBS into a surveillance system. The system developed was named SURVEX (SURVeillance EXpert). The aim of the exercise has been to demonstrate improvements over existing surveillance systems, particularly in the areas of alarm rationalisation, alarm prioritisation, predictive alarm capabilities and human computer interaction (HCI). The SURVEX system is now at an advanced stage. It has been successful in trials at a large test establishment in Scotland and on a plant simulator at RRA. The SURVEX design has been proposed for installation into nuclear submarines