A method for managing alarms in a network includes identifying a first set of alarms based on data in a knowledge base, determining at least one attribute for each alarm in the first set of alarms, generating a model based on the at least one attribute, and applying the model to manage alarms in the network. The at least one attribute includes at least one of a persistence time for one or more alarms in the first set of alarms, an alarm group derived from the first set of alarms, and predictions for alarms in the first set of alarms. The model may be adaptively updated to track changing network conditions relating to the alarms.