Jersey Airport
Airport Overview
Jersey Airport is the gateway to the Channel Islands, handling over a million passengers a year from the UK and Europe. The smooth and safe running of the airport relies on the operation and maintenance of several hundred systems for air traffic control, passenger information, meteorological, air conditioning, intruder detection and more.
This responsibility lies with the Jersey States Department of Electronics (DOE), which monitors all airport systems 24 hours a day. A central alarm reporting point is required for all airport systems — providing audible and visible alarm generation, acknowledgement, recording, time-stamping and remedial action notation.
After twenty years of use, a traditional alarm annunciator panel and paper logbook had become very fragile, incapable of expansion, and a modern replacement was needed. The DOE turned to PAMS to deliver the upgrade.
DOE Requirements
The DOE required that any replacement system deliver the following core benefits within a tight technical specification and budget:
All of these requirements were delivered by PAMS. The old panel was replaced with a 19" rack mount touchscreen LCD display connected to an industrially rugged PC running Prodigy software on Microsoft Windows, with twin caddied hard drives and RAID Level 1 disk mirroring for simplified recovery in the event of disk failure.
The Solution
Alarm Display & Acknowledgement
The touchscreen display provides a user interface designed to resemble the existing panel, featuring a grid of 64 buttons — each representing one alarm channel with state indicated by colour. When an alarm occurs its button flashes and changes colour, and a local sounder activates. Alarms can be accepted by pressing the associated button, via an alarm banner present at the top of all displays, or from a full-page chronological alarm list. A major fault button on the main display allows all active alarms to be accepted simultaneously. A pull-out keyboard drawer with keyboard, mouse, and virtual on-screen keyboard is also provided for text input.
Alarm Nag & Escalation
If an alarm is not accepted within a pre-set time, the DOE intercom system is automatically activated to raise the attention of other engineers. A system option also allows engineers to receive and accept alarms via SMS text messaging to mobile phones. For alarms that have been accepted but remain active, an alarm nag facility re-triggers the alarm at configurable intervals. Free-form text comments can be entered when an alarm occurs or at any later time and are recorded in the alarm history log.
Automated Event Recording
The system automatically records all alarm information — including alarm occurrence, acknowledgement, reversion, comments, date, time and operator ID — to a Microsoft Access-compatible database. Tabular alarm reports covering any period can be filtered, previewed and printed on demand. All events are timestamped to millisecond accuracy and synchronised to the site NTP Time Server (Master Clock).
Remote Viewing & Network Access
A major benefit of the new system is remote viewing of the main alarm panel from any PC on the network. When the airport is not fully manned, any engineer can supervise the alarm panel from a remote PC. For safe operation, remote access is read-only — alarm acceptance and system reconfiguration remain restricted to the main panel. LAN connectivity also allows secure backup of alarm data, report printing, and remote access to data files. A telephone modem and remote PC monitoring software provide rapid remote support from the mainland.
Remote Data Capture & Expansion
The system interfaces to standard industrial PLCs or dedicated data capture equipment, enabling both digital and analogue data capture. Analogue signal values indicate alarm severity and support condition monitoring and alarm prediction through trend analysis. The system provides 64 direct alarm input channels expandable to 128, and 8 control output channels expandable to 64. All digital inputs are opto-isolated, with fuse and surge suppression protection on each channel. There is no practical limit to the size of application that can be handled.
Technical Specification
Key Benefits Delivered
Alarm Supervisory System
Cost-effective upgrade and replacement of an obsolete, fragile annunciator panel.
Automated Recording
Automated alarm event recording eliminates the need for manual logging entirely.
Unlimited Expansion
Capable of unlimited expansion in both alarm input channels and application scope.
Remote Supervision
Remote system viewing enables improved supervision, especially at reduced manning levels.
Improved Reporting
Remote data capture provides richer, more specific alarm information and trend analysis.
Self-Sufficient
Easy in-house configuration means the DOE is not reliant on the supplier for changes — saving time and money.