Drishya AI Labs: Enhancing Alarm Intelligence Through Machine Learning

OSUM, headquartered in Canada, is a privately held company in the oil and gas sector and enjoys being a significant producer in Western Canada. It is headquartered in Calgary, Alberta. In 2023, Canada was the single largest supplier of imported oil to the United States, responsible for over 35% of US imports, much more than Saudi Arabia, Venezuela, and all the OPEC countries combined. OSUM uses steam-assisted gravity drainage (SAGD) technology to extract heavy crude oil using an advanced form of steam stimulation. Water plays an important role in this extraction process. In an oil extraction plant, there are several interconnected systems that communicate with each other with established controls and interlocks. The plant operator’s role is to ensure the plant runs smoothly without malfunctions, breakdowns, and other disruptions. To facilitate this, alarms and sensors are attached to different systems to signal any potential disruption and mandate a call for timely intervention. However, there are times when multiple alarms are set off, creating a conundrum for the operator, who is challenged with prioritizing which alarm to tackle first. Nuisance alarms, such as chattering, can be a source of distraction for the operator. Such distractions can negatively impact plant operations and result in plant downtime, costing the company significant dollar loss. Being concerned about the increasing cases of spikes in alarms, the company tied up with Drishya AI Labs to help solve this problem by leveraging machine learning algorithms so that such distractions could be reduced.