US Patent 7859403 Monitoring and alarming system and method

A system and method for selectively communicating data from a remote facility to a central computing device via one or more communication networks and/or protocols. Measurement data for a particular operation is collected and stored by a field device at the remote facility. The field device compares the collected measurement data to stored threshold data to detect an alarm event or transfer event. If an alarm event is detected, the RTU transfers an alarm message to a user via a first communication network. If a transfer event is detected, the RTU transfers a transfer message to the user via a different communication network. If a no-event is detected, the field device continues to collect and store measurement data for the particular operation.