A


t least 320 tall structures will appear on London’s skyline over


the next decade.


With the world’s biggest cities struggling to house rising populations, building upwards has become the obvious solution. But the construction and maintenance of high-rise structures is no easy undertaking for the construction supply chain when it comes to fire engineering.


The ‘smart’ buildings concept – where disparate building technologies are integrated to generate and respond to environmental data – is helping architects, fire engineers and integrators meet ambitious targets around sustainability, comfort and convenience, and operational efficiency. Global spending on smart building technology was forecast to grow from $7bn in 2015 to $17.4bn by 2019 by IDC Insights.


IFSEC Global’s The Smart Buildings Report 2017 (find it here: www.IFSECGlobal. com/downloads) surveyed fire and security professionals, facility managers and building owners on their building tech and how they used it. More than half (53%) of respondents classified their fire alarms as ‘smart’ – noteworthy for an industry where stringent regulatory compliance means that technological change often lags that of other industries.


Nevertheless, one fire-safety professional commented that “the benefits of ‘smart’ technologies are not being fully realised in terms of building safety, at least in part due to the fact that technical regulatory requirements for fire protection and life safety systems exceed those for other systems – e.g. BMS, data network cables and other components are not required to be as resilient, for example, in terms of resistance to fire.”


Similarly, another fire-safety manager lamented that “immense benefits… are not being realised due to a disproportionate focus on security and energy management.”


Another respondent noted that “in large, complex buildings it is useful to have various intelligent systems to assist with monitoring fire alarm cause and effects – i.e. where electrically locked doors, ventilation shuts down, floors are signalled to go to ground for certain fire alarm zone activations.”


Formidable challenges


Fire-safety managers in tall buildings face formidable challenges around evacuation plans, such as lift evacuation strategies, fire detection in large spaces and fire equipment installation and management. “You need to be able to model a specific building, the specific construction techniques, the materials, and then design for that load… So you need computational tools and to validate them with experimental data” –


© CI TY S ECURI TY MAGAZ INE – SUMMER 2017


How BIM and smart building tech are meeting


the high-rise fire challenges


Professor Luke Bisby, School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh. Fire safety engineering applies scientific and engineering principles to reduce the risk of fire and model human behaviour with a view to designing buildings and practices that prolong evacuation time in the event of a fire – especially important for buildings that are multiple stories high.


Speaking to PECM Magazine, Professor Luke Bisby, Arup Chair of Fire and Structures within the School of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, says that to treat fire as a design load, “you need to be able to model a specific building, the specific construction techniques, the materials and then design for that load. So that means you need computational tools to do that and you need to validate those computation tools with experimental data.”


This is why BIM (building information modelling), which digitally renders a 3D visualisation of buildings before construction, is an increasingly indispensable tool.


It means fire and security installers can virtually test installations at the design stage to optimise performance and cut costs. Proven to be effective for large-scale projects, BIM is highly recommended for tall buildings and is now mandatory for all government building projects worth more than £5m.


Surveillance camera integration


Despite the sometimes glacial pace of change in the fire industry, innovative work is being done to integrate fire detection technologies with surveillance cameras. Such integrations can both accelerate the detection of fires and reduce false alarms.


By capturing images as a ‘pre-alarmed’ event – before a full evacuation or a call to the fire service is triggered – operators can visually verify if there is indeed a fire.


Video flame and smoke detection cameras are commonly used in large facilities, outdoor locations and tunnels, but much research is being done to make these devices suitable for inside buildings too.


www. c i t y s e cu r i t yma g a z ine . com


When images are captured, software algorithms identify flame and smoke characteristics based on spectral, spatial or temporal properties such as changes in brightness, contrast, edge content, motion, dynamic frequencies, patterns and colour matching.


A major advantage to video detection is its ability to achieve rapid detection in large areas. A single camera can instantly ‘see’ smoke or flame anywhere within its field of view, whereas conventional smoke detectors only emit an alert once smoke or heat has reached them. Detectors are also prone to deterioration in performance as they age and collect dust.


With smart buildings taking a more proactive approach to fire safety, as opposed to relying on traditional reactive systems, there is cause for confidence that the proliferation of tall buildings in overcrowded cities need not cause a rise in fire damage costs or fire-related deaths.


For a deeper insight into fire safety in tall buildings, FIREX International will hold The Tall Building Fire Safety Conference (hosted by Horizon Scan BCP) for the second year running, between 20 and 22 June 2017, ExCeL London.


Entry to FIREX International 2017 is free and grants attendees access to over 20,000 products and services on display across the Protection & Management series, which also covers security (IFSEC International), health and safety (Safety & Health Expo), field service (Field Service Management Expo), facilities management (Facilities Show) and workwear (Professional Clothing show).


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