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to remove alarms, bringing the associated potential risks to their safety.
Alternative technologies
The British Standard BS 5839-6 and UK fire and rescue services recommend installing optical or multi sensor alarms instead of ionisation smoke alarms in circulation areas, such as hallways and landings, as a minimum level of protection.
Optical alarms These work on a completely different principle to ionisation alarms. They use infrared emitters and receivers inside a completely dark smoke chamber. When smoke enters the chamber, some of the infrared light is scattered by the smoke particles and reaches the receiver. The greater the level of smoke in the chamber, the more light is scattered and detected by the receiver. By measuring the amount of light scatter, the level of smoke present in the room can be accurately measured. When the level exceeds the alarm threshold, the alarm sounds. As optical detectors are marginally less
sensitive to fast flaming fires, they are therefore less likely to sound in response to cooking fumes than ionisation alarms, making them more suitable for installation in circulation areas such as hallways and landings.
Multi sensor technology Another layer of safety is added to the inherent reliability of an optical alarm by
this type of technology, as it uses additional inputs from the environment, for example temperature, to help identify a potential fire hazard quicker.
Other enhancements
Multi sensing and optical technology is also being enhanced by new and cutting edge innovations, one example of which is interconnected alarms, which have been developed to help provide the greatest levels of protection available. Systems to wirelessly connect the alarms
throughout a property alert individuals of the presence of a fire or carbon monoxide from any alarm in the home. Controlled experiments held in conjunction with fire and rescue services have shown that this can provide several additional minutes of warning, giving people vital additional time to safely evacuate. This technology has been taken a step
further with the introduction of cloud interconnectivity, by means of which data from the connected alarms is uploaded to a Wi-Safe2 cloud platform in real time. This enables the system to analyse data automatically, to determine whether an individual property is at high risk of a fire occurring. The idea for this patent pending technology came from forensic analysis, which was carried out on alarms recovered from real fires by fire and rescue services throughout the UK. Patterns in the data
www.frmjournal.com JUNE 2018 45
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