Alarm Management

Removing nuisance alarms decreases stress and reduces risks for crews, so your fleet can operate safely and more effectively. Effective alarm management maintains the safety and efficiency of maritime operations.

Latest Research 

With ships generating thousands of daily alerts, crews are drowning in noise, triggering dangerous alarm fatigue that undermines safety at sea. LR’s latest research, Alarm Management Vol. 2 dives deep into more than 40 million alarm events across 11 vessels, revealing a troubling truth: most alarms offer little operational value, disrupt rest and push crews toward risky workarounds.  

Alarm Management Advisory Services 

Onboard ship, alarms present a paradox. A critical resource, crew need to know when something is wrong in complex environments at sea.  

With hundreds or possibly thousands of alarm systems onboard, those wrongly calibrated, incorrectly installed, poorly maintained or malfunctioning can trigger nuisance alerts.  

Alarm flooding, when there are too many alerts to manage over a particular timeframe, has become a common experience for many onboard.  

This situation poses risks when crew are left overwhelmed by too many alerts. This situation not only increases stress but creates an environment where some alerts are actively ignored or supressed, opening the door to real alerts being missed. 

New research 

New LR research helps you understand the issues surrounding alarm management by looking at the challenges faced by bridge crews and engine room control personnel.  

LR helps you measure the volume and frequency of alarms to show how urgent alerts can build, creating high-pressure situations which affect both safety and performance. By prioritising alarms, LR helps you cut through the noise, reducing nuisance alerts while increasing operator productivity and vessel safety. 

Effective alarm management delivers clear business benefits by reducing unplanned downtime, avoidable maintenance, environmental or regulatory incidents and overload stress on operators while increasing operator productivity. 

LR Advisory’s areas of expertise include: 

• Alarm System Auditing 
• Alarm Philosophy and Documentation 
• Alarm System Performance Review and Assessment 
• Alarm Rationalisation 
• Alarm Prioritisation 
• Alarm Response Procedure 
• Removal of spurious alarms (offline equipment or non-alarms) 

Download the product leaflet here 

Why LR? 

LR is uniquely positioned to deliver this work based on extensive expertise in maritime safety and technology. LR specialises in leveraging innovative technologies to solve safety and risk challenges and brings over 250 years of experience in improving the safety and performance of critical infrastructure worldwide. 

LR's Technical Directorate has been instrumental in producing alarm management guidance for the maritime industry as part of LR's Technology Programme.  We have combined real world data from vessels to interrogate the challenges faced by bridge crews and engine room control personnel.