1. A method for recognizing and identifying emergency situations in an anesthesia system comprising: a) measuring a plurality of variables associated with an anesthesia delivery to produce measurement values associated therewith, b) forming the measurement values of said measured variables into pattern vectors characterizing instantaneous states of the system, c) providing a emergency identifying self organizing map; d) training the emergency identifying self organizing map, prior to an actual measurement situation, by providing reference material comprising pattern vectors corresponding to actual situations, the pattern vectors being arranged in said self organizing map as weight vectors, each weight vector representing a particular combination of system parameters representing an actual condition, and e) comparing the pattern vectors formed from the measurement results with weight vectors (m.sub.1) of the emergency identifying self-organizing map to recognize and identify emergency situations.