Method to configure control system alarms by associating alarms to tags

An alarm configuration system simplifies alarm management in industrial control systems by improving scalability and capacity of alarms. A control system device allows alarms to be configured by associating the alarm conditions with controller tags or other components of a control system. Properties of these alarm conditions can be referenced by external systems as well as programmatically as extensions of the associated controller tag or component. The alarm conditions are evaluated independently of the control program executed by the control device. A development system allows association of reusable user-defined alarm conditions with selected data types, such that the alarm conditions are automatically applied to controller tags of the selected data type. Selected alarm conditions can also be grouped into alarm sets, allowing operations to be performed collectively on the set of alarms. The system can also generate collective alarm statistics for the alarm conditions included in an alarm set.