Alarms are devices that monitor systems over time and issue alerts.
They are found in everyday living, in medicine, in engineering, in business, etc. In general, an alarm should issue alerts that encourage appropriate, timely responses. Unfortunately, most alarm systems, both in the real world and in the academic world, are ineffective in performing their tasks. The result is often a chaotic spattering of alarms that correlates poorly with the need for immediate attention, and that serves only to interrupt domain experts needlessly. Thus, the design of an alarm for a specific monitoring task can be a sizeable undertaking that is based on a number of ad hoc assumptions.