An approach to combining related notifications in large-scale building management systems with a rehabilitation facility case study

ICT advances have enabled the incorporation of multiple devices that monitor various aspects of the environment into building management (BM) systems. The data from these devices is used to detect multiple abnormal situations, which require the awareness of system users and/or timely response. However, the number of abnormal situations is usually large, and delivering all of the associated notifications is overwhelming for users, rather than helping them to interpret the ongoing status of the environment. This work proposes a novel approach for combining ongoing notifications in the monitoring systems by their types, priorities, locations, and receivers. The approach is based on formal classification of possible alarms and runtime analysis of ongoing notifications with the aim of reducing repeating information pieces delivered as part of multiple notifications. The paper provides details of combination principles of notifications and applies them to real data from a rehabilitation facility. The results show a reduction in the users' information load of approximately 42% of the peak number of ongoing notifications. It is expected that the proposed approach will improve situation awareness in the managed facilities - enabling better and faster decisions on the ongoing status of the environment.