Research

Brief
Human factors good practice guide to
managing alarms and alerts
T326 - October 2009

Background When designed appropriately, audible and visual alarms and

alerts can be very effective. However, if designed without
consideration of the operator's needs and abilities, or the other
alarms and alerts within the environment, they can become
overwhelming, confusing, and annoying. A review by human
factors (HF) experts in the rail industry identified no specific
guidelines for the design and fitting of alarms and alerts within the
industry. Following stakeholder consultation, this project was set
up with a view to addressing this.

Aims The aim of the project was to develop an HF alarms and alerts
guidance and evaluation tool for the rail industry. The tool is
aimed specifically at helping designers, operators, safety and HF
specialists to determine the acceptability of current alerting
systems and providing good practice guidance to help address
any concerns relating to an alarms environment.

The work was managed by RSSB on behalf of the Vehicle/Train

Control and Communications System Interface Committee, and
delivered by Greenstreet Berman and the University of Plymouth.

Method The content of the tool was developed based on the following
research activities:

 Observation of the alarms and alerts in a number of train

cabs.
 Literature review of guidelines and standards from both rail
and other industries.
 Development of a good practice guide and contents for the
guidance and evaluation tool.
 Application of a paper-based version of the evaluation tool
in two case studies:
 An existing train cab environment.
 GSM-R alarms and alerts.
 Revision of the contents of the tool.

RSSB R&D Programme

Block 2 Angel Square research@ssb.co.uk
1 Torrens Street www.rssb.co.uk/research/
London EC1V 1NY rail_industry_research_programme.asp
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 Human factors good practice guide to managing alarms and alerts
T326 - October 2009

A web-based alarms and alerts guidance and evaluation tool was

then developed based on the contents of the paper version of the
tool. The tool was developed as a prototype for user testing and
a final version then produced.

Figure 1: A screenshot of the final tool

Following the completion of this work, the tool has now more
recently been developed to include the addition of further work on
volumes within a train cab environment, a section on speech, and
a separate set of exemplar sounds in the form of a sounds library
for use by alarms system designers. The sounds library is
accessible to the user via the main tool.

Findings The project has developed a web-based tool that consists of two
main sections: good practice guidance on the design of alarms
and alerts environments and a checklist tool to evaluate systems
compliance with good practice. These now link directly into the
new sounds library application.

The guidance section of the tool contains detailed HF good

practice on the design of alarm and alert environments, based on

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 a review of existing literature and guidance. The guidance can be
searched for relevant information via a navigation bar.

The evaluation tool provides a set of checklist questions which

can be used to help identify whether an existing or proposed
environment complies with good practice.

Topics for both the guidance and evaluation include:

 General issues - modality, false alarms, alert philosophy,

standardisation, and characteristics of users.
 Auditory issues - number, rate, prioritisation, confusability,
and loudness.
 Visual issues - number, visual field, prioritisation, colour,
flash rates, legibility, luminance, glare and reflectance, and
language.
 Sound design principles where alarm and alert
combinations illustrate good and bad design.

The sounds library currently contains 54 sounds and offers advice

to determine the type of sounds to be used within a current
system or a new design.

Figure 2: A screen shot from the Auditory section of the evaluation tool

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 Human factors good practice guide to managing alarms and alerts
T326 - October 2009

The answers section indicates where good practice is not

adhered to, and provides links to relevant sections of the good
practice guide to give advice on improving the alarm/ alert
environment and design.

The guidance within the tool has been applied in a case study,
where it was used to evaluate the design of a number of auditory
alerts for the GSM-R in-cab radio.

Re-designs of auditory alerts were produced and tested, based

on the guidance. Full details of this work can be found in the
report: T326 Review of alarm and alert sounds for GSM-R: Final
report, which is available on the RSSB website.

Further Development
The alarms and alerts guidance tool including the new sounds
library is available on the RSSB website. It is designed to provide
a wealth of information on good design principles at a working
level and is based on practical trials experience. This is intended
to be of particular benefit to train designers and those needing to
modify or up-grade existing trainborne alarm and alert systems.

RSSB is currently involved in promoting the tool to the rail industry

and welcomes feedback and suggestions for further
improvement.

Contact For more information please contact:

Head of Engineering Research

R&D Programme
RSSB
research@rssb.co.uk

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