Data-driven
methods are commonly used to identify abnormal operating
conditions to maintain the health and safety of processes, which assume
that the process data are precisely known and single-valued. However,
in practice, process data are from multiple sources and are in various
formats with uncertainties or measurement errors, which may lead to
a high false-alarm rate and imprecise decisions. In addition, various
key variables are difficult or impossible to measure online, and they
are always estimated and described in terms of semantic information
by operators or experts. In this work, a one-versus-rest interval
radial basis function neural network (OVR-IRBF-NN)-based abnormality
identification method is proposed for imprecise data and semantic
information in the process industry. First, three types of process
data, namely, precise single-valued variables (PSVVs), imprecise single-valued
variables (ISVVs), and two-dimensional-interval-valued variables (2DIVVs),
which are transformed from semantic information, are analyzed to investigate
more comprehensive process information. Then, transformation approaches
are presented for transforming these three types of data into one-dimensional
intervals. Gaussian mixture model (GMM)-based measurement error estimation
is developed for ISVVs, and an uncertain-unchanged interval adjustment
strategy is proposed for 2DIVVs. Moreover, the one-versus-rest interval
radial basis function neural network (OVR-IRBF-NN) is put forth for
the identification of abnormal operating conditions via the analysis
of one-dimensional-interval-valued data, providing more reliable and
robust identification results due to the employment of interval-valued
data. The proposed strategy is evaluated on both a numerical example
and a real hydrometallurgical metallurgy leaching process, and the
results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the strategy.