FIRE & ELECTRICAL SAFETY BEATING THE BLAZE
Designing a robust fire safety system for certain environments can be challenging and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Here, Simon Foulkes, Product Manager at Honeywell Life Safety takes a look at the considerations for keeping employees safe.
Whether staying in a hotel, visiting a museum, or going to work, it’s an essential prerequisite that public buildings should keep us safe in the event of a fire. While physical security systems can easily integrate consumer-led trends, such as mobile access and cloud technology, it’s more difficult for fire. But that’s not to say that there haven’t been any advances in this area. They’re just
PAIRING STANDARD SMOKE AND FLAME
DETECTION WITH VIDEO CONTENT ANALYTICS CAN CREATE AN EFFECTIVE EARLY WARNING SYSTEM.
being made under intense scrutiny, as they must ensure they comply with strict regulations and do their most important job – protecting lives.
It’s a complex process for everyone involved, from the fire system manufacturer, to specifier and installer, to maintenance contractor and the building operator. Balancing regulation, building requirements, legacy systems, and budget can be tricky.
ALIGNING WITH
REGULATIONS When designing or updating a fire system, a skilled risk assessment and knowledge of regulation is the first place to start. Everyone in the fire industry has a responsibility to be aware of, and meet, the requirements for fire safety systems under the Regulatory Reform Fire Safety Order (RRFSO). The RRFSO dictates that it is the “responsible person” who is tasked with ensuring a safe building, and that person is usually the
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building owner or occupier. But many buildings still rely on old technology, which may not be up to code and could endanger lives.
The biggest barrier here is education. Although we are seeing improvements in the amount of prosecutions being made under the RRFSO, there is still work to be done in increasing awareness of these regulatory requirements. The Fire Industry Association (FIA) and other trade bodies are leading the charge in publicising exactly what is required but government assistance is also necessary.
CUTTING DOWN ON
UNWANTED ACTIVATIONS Apart from regulation, another key concern when designing an effective fire safety system is minimising unwanted activations – which can be very disruptive for employees and irritating for visitors – especially if it turns out to have been caused by a false positive activation.
To reduce unwanted activations, installers and specifiers must consider how to design a system that can provide the best coverage for the building in question. One of the most common causes is ageing systems that do not utilise the latest technology. Although there’s no catch-all solution for unwanted activations, the market has responded to the issue with new technologies that can verify alarms and limit their occurrence and impact.
VIDEO VERIFICATION IP-compatible fire threat verification is one of the most promising technologies for minimising unwanted activations in fire system design. Pairing standard smoke and flame detection with video content analytics can create an effective early warning system.
When smoke is detected, this type of system uses a camera to capture an image or video recording, which
is then processed by software to determine if smoke from a potential fire is present. Specialised algorithms use advanced video content analytics to identify smoke based on spectral, spatial, and temporal properties.
Once verified by the analytics, the system will alert and draw a bounding box around the detected smoke cloud and send images to a central monitoring station or business stakeholder. Alarm scenarios are made extremely clear and the alert can be confirmed and actioned by first responders to ensure the correct response is taken.
THE FIA AND OTHER TRADE BODIES ARE
LEADING THE CHARGE IN PUBLICISING
WHAT IS REQUIRED BUT GOVERNMENT
ASSISTANCE IS ALSO NECESSARY.
LOOKING TO THE FUTURE This is just one example of the technologies that are enhancing new and existing fire systems. It’s unlikely that we will see any truly revolutionary changes to fire safety technologies in the next few years, in large part due to stringent regulations. The changes we will see would be better described as evolutionary – the integration of advanced intelligent technologies that can enhance existing systems to provide capabilities that maximise safety and minimise disruption for building operators.
www.honeywell.com www.tomorrowshs.com
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