Abnormal Situation Management in petrochemical plants: can a Pilot's Associate crack crude?

Abnormal Situations comprise a range of process disruptions in which petrochemical plant personnel must intervene to correct problems with which the control systems can not cope. Preventable losses from abnormal situations cost the U.S. economy at least $20B annually. The Abnormal Situation Management (ASM) Joint Research and Development Consortium (Honeywell, the seven largest U.S. petrochemical companies, and two software companies) was formed to develop the technologies needed to allow plant personnel to control and prevent abnormal situations. The Consortium is working on a NIST-funded, 3.5-year, $16.6 million program to demonstrate the technical feasibility of a collaborative decision support system (called AEGIS) for helping operations personnel deal with abnormal situations. Many of the issues faced in the development of AEGIS have also been faced in the research and development of associate systems for military aviation domains, especially the U.S. Air Force's Pilot's Associate (PA) and the U.S. Army's Rotorcraft Pilot's Associate (RPA). Honeywell intends to apply associate technologies as vigorously as possible to the ASM problem. The two domains have a number of features in common, which we hope will permit significant technology transfer in both directions. This paper describes the similarities of and differences between the technical and organizational domains in which Abnormal Situation Management and the PA and RPA systems must operate, and assesses the issues thus raised. Finally, we describe our approach to resolving these issues and assuring successful demonstration of the feasibility of associate technology in this new domain.