Environmental monitoring system

User requirements

The customer requires:

•  monitoring of probe values, with alarm management based on thresholds set by users;

• e-mail notifications for each alarm occurred in the system;

• reporting management (probe value trend reports, historical alarms, audit trails, SCADA security reports);

• SCADA and PLC redundancy.

Used softwares

• GE iFIX 5.9, for managing the logical and graphical interface (communication driver, variable database, HMI), between the field and the users;

• KEPWare KEPServerEX, for managing communication between SCADA and PLC;

• OPC UA, for exposing data to remote clients with the aforementioned protocol;

• GE iHistorian 7.0 SP2, for logging the values of the probes and the alarms and events occurred in the system;

• WIN911, for managing email notifications;

• Dream Report 2020 R1, for reporting management;

• Python 3, for the creation of customized software.

System description

The system is made up of seven virtual machines in a VMWare environment and four physical clients located in different rooms of the plant.
Six out of seven virtual machines are servers configured in redundancy between them, to ensure that in the event of an anomaly of one or more hosts of the system, this can continue to function to guarantee continuous availability and integrity of the data essential to the customer.
The graphic pages are made in such a way as to ensure simple and immediate navigability within the system, with the characteristic that each supervision area is accessible based on the user who accesses it;
in fact, a user who belongs to a certain department does not have access to another department, unlike administrators and maintainers who have access to all monitoring areas.
User management is centralized on the two SCADA servers, so that each update of the same is synchronized both between the two servers and with all the hosts belonging to the supervision system.
Each procedure on the system is automated thanks to the development of scripts in VBA, to give users the possibility to obtain what is required by executing simple and immediate procedures.
Even today, the system is subjected to periodic annual maintenance, in order to guarantee its correct functioning, and to continuously improve its functionality.