Capstone Project

BMS Alarm Analytics Platform

At NAU, there are many nuisance alarms that occur across campus buildings. These alarms can make it difficult for facilities teams to identify and respond to important issues. For our capstone project, our team worked with NAU's utilities team to analyze alarm data and identify opportunities to improve alarm quality and reduce nuisance alerts. During this project, our team had the opportunity to work with real-world data and collaborate with facilities professionals to turn our findings into actionable recommendations for improving campus building systems. This project was a great example of how engineering skills can be applied to solve practical problems and make a positive impact on the world around us.

Project Overview

When we first started this project, we were given access to ALL of NAU's alarm data. While this may not seem too bad, it was a lot of data for a small team to handle. We spent our first few months just trying to organize the data and learn their alarm systems.

After learning how NAU's Willow Activate and Willow Application are integrated with each other, we began analyzing alarm data that was high volume and low importance. We identified several recurring nuisance alarms that were frequently triggered but did not indicate critical issues. We then reviewed the alarm logic and identified changes that could be made to reduce unnecessary alerts while still ensuring that important issues were properly flagged.

When evaluating our proposed changes, we found that we could reduce the number of nuisance alarms by over 50% while still maintaining the integrity of the alarm system. We documented our findings and recommendations in a final report and presentation for NAU's utilities team, who were able to use our insights to make improvements to their alarm systems and enhance their ability to respond to critical issues across campus buildings.

Tools and Skills Used

What I Worked On

As the team lead for this project, I was responsible for coordinating our efforts and ensuring that we stayed on track to meet our goals. I worked closely with my teammates to analyze alarm data, identify patterns and trends, and develop recommendations for improving alarm quality. I also helped document our findings and prepare presentation materials for our final report. Overall, this project was a great opportunity for me to apply my engineering skills to a real world problem and collaborate with others to make a positive impact on our campus community.

• Coordinated team efforts and ensured we stayed on track to meet our goals.
• Actively communicated with NAU's utilities team to understand their needs and constraints.
• Helped document and present our findings to the utilities team.
• Studied the Willow Systems and their integration to ensure proper functionality.

Project Accomplishments

• Reduced nuisance alarms by up to 70%.
• Ensured alarms were properly configured and functioning as intended.
• Worked effectively with the capstone team to deliver a successful project to the utilities team.