A prioritized alarm trend summary display method operating on a computer, comprising: receiving at least one alarm signal from plant equipment in a process flow indicative of failure detection or malfunction of the plant equipment at an alarm system host computer; generating an alarm message frame from said at least one alarm signal; graphically displaying a prioritized alarm trend list which reflects alarm trends associated with said alarm message frame and an associated prioritized alarm summary list on a graphical user interface with a plurality of highlighting and filtering functions, and organizing a plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list in a top-to-bottom vertical arrangement; prioritizing a plurality of alarm indicators over time within said plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list in a right-to-left horizontal arrangement with qualitative trend arrows indicating a qualitative direction of a parameter that last alarmed in said plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list, and aligning said plurality of prioritized alarm indicators with a most recent alarm appearing on a right side of prioritized said alarm trend list; and aligning said plurality of alarm indicators with a most recent real-time alarm appearing on a right side of said alarm trend list and a historical representation of said plurality of alarm indicators appearing on a left side of said alarm trend list, said plurality of alarms organized logically by location so that said plurality of alarms are scalable to any level in plant equipment hierarchy; selecting at least one of said plurality of prioritized alarm indicators in said prioritized alarm trend list, so that a corresponding alarm description item is highlighted and displayed in said alarm summary list, if said alarm is active, thereby allowing an operator to see when said alarm occured, its sequence, relation and priority, thereby helping said operator to cope with an alarm flood. receiving at least one alarm signal from plant equipment in a process flow indicative of failure detection or malfunction of the plant equipment at an alarm system host computer; generating an alarm message frame from said at least one alarm signal; graphically displaying a prioritized alarm trend list which reflects alarm trends associated with said alarm message frame and an associated prioritized alarm summary list on a graphical user interface with a plurality of highlighting and filtering functions, and organizing a plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list in a top-to-bottom vertical arrangement; prioritizing a plurality of alarm indicators over time within said plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list in a right-to-left horizontal arrangement with qualitative trend arrows indicating a qualitative direction of a parameter that last alarmed in said plurality of rows in said prioritized alarm trend list, and aligning said plurality of prioritized alarm indicators with a most recent alarm appearing on a right side of prioritized said alarm trend list; and aligning said plurality of alarm indicators with a most recent real-time alarm appearing on a right side of said alarm trend list and a historical representation of said plurality of alarm indicators appearing on a left side of said alarm trend list, said plurality of alarms organized logically by location so that said plurality of alarms are scalable to any level in plant equipment hierarchy;