Addressable systems: the manufacturer's opinion.
Many people talk about addressable analog fire alarm systems: they criticize them for their high cost, admire their capabilities, and argue about their areas of application.
Everyone views these systems from their own point of view. Many of the arguments are superficial.
In my opinion, a complete picture and objective assessment are not obtained, because these arguments lack another view — from the inside.
The view of the manufacturer of these systems.
Only by comparing the opinions of all interested parties can one obtain a complete objective picture of a particular product.
It is the manufacturer who knows what the actual cost price of detectors and devices is, what the real advantages of these systems are, because before making a decision on development, these issues were carefully studied, and in the process of development and implementation they were significantly clarified, since “pitfalls” appeared.
In order to supplement information about addressable systems with the point of view of one of the manufacturers, I am writing this article.
Let me make it clear right away that the company I represent produces both addressable fire alarm systems and conventional threshold ones, so my point of view is neutral. I am not interested in praising one type of system and criticizing the other.
But since the article is devoted to addressable systems, I would like to speak in their defense. Moreover, the scope of application of these systems is still somewhat different.
But, taking into account global experience, we must give credit to addressable systems and admit that the future still belongs to them. But first, a few words about something else.
In developed countries, certain fire alarm systems are implemented based on how well they ensure the safety of people and the security of property, and in our country, it is still because they are “forced” to install them.
The West has a very developed insurance system. Insurance companies compile their equipment ratings, which take into account its reliability and functionality in terms of safety, and are the initiators of developing standards in this area.
Accordingly, the customer, before choosing equipment, will consult with his insurance company about what insurance premiums he will have to pay.
Well, since the more reliable the equipment, the lower the payments, the choice is often obvious.
Thus, there is no point in developing a bunch of GOSTs and trying to force manufacturers to produce high-quality equipment. It is simply necessary to create conditions in which it is unprofitable to produce bad equipment.
The market itself will put everything in its place, and insurance companies will help with this, since they are certainly not interested in collusion with manufacturers and installation organizations.
Then there will be no need to determine how many detectors need to be installed «on point» — one, two, three, or maybe five?
After all, it is the poor quality of the detectors that causes the requirement to install three of them “in a spot”.
If we follow this logic, then we need to install 2-3 devices in parallel, so that, God forbid, due to a device failure, the object is not left without protection at all.
Then we will have another twenty manufacturers of already cheap devices, and their work will be very profitable.
In my opinion, we still need to take a civilized path and involve insurance companies and make insurance mandatory for facilities.
You will say that this is very expensive for the customer? But isn't it expensive to pay crazy money for servicing low-quality equipment? As a result, such systems at facilities are often simply turned off.
And then fires break out and people die and buildings and material assets burn down completely.
Isn't it expensive?
Of course, this topic will cause controversy, but perhaps the truth will be born in them, and we will still go the civilized way, developing equipment, an insurance system, and ultimately creating a market for security systems that will stimulate the best manufacturers.
The self-regulatory organizations (SROs) that are being created now cannot replace insurance companies, since their activities are aimed at insuring risks from poorly performed work and do not protect objects from poor-quality equipment.
At the same time, the entire responsibility for the safety of people at the facility during the operation of the equipment lies entirely with the customer, who is not insured against low-quality equipment, since he is not, as a rule, a specialist in this field and cannot professionally evaluate all proposals.
An independent party is needed in this process, which will take into account both the quality of the equipment and the quality of the work on the final result — on the basis of the operation of the systems at the facility, and not just at the construction stage.
Now about the addressable systems themselves and their role in the process of ensuring fire safety. I fundamentally disagree with the opinion that addressability is more important for security systems. It is impossible to state so unequivocally here.
I believe that individual addresses in detectors are of great importance in fire alarm systems. Liberties in the construction of fire alarm systems at Russian facilities and underestimation of their importance have led to the fact that they are financed by the customer on a residual basis.
Ambiguity in regulatory requirements for the use of addressable fire alarm systems does not allow them to develop.
This leads to the fact that at facilities where it is recommended to install addressable systems, conventional threshold ones are installed in order to reduce costs.
When ensuring fire safety of facilities, in the vast majority of cases the key factor is the price of the equipment, and not its capabilities and the degree of protection of the facility and people.
Many things are simplified, many things are overlooked in favor of cheapness.
We still have strong stereotypes, and such is the psychology of people that the installation of a fire alarm is perceived as an «obligation» and not as a vital necessity.
This is precisely what leads to the fact that at many facilities the fire alarm either does not work or does not meet the recommendations of regulatory documents and common sense in general.
This is precisely why tragedies happen with «Lame Horses», boarding schools and nursing homes.
Only when we all change our psychology and understand that fire alarms at a facility are a vital necessity, when we start installing systems for people and for their safety, when we start treating people with care, then we will begin to understand what the real difference is between addressable analog and conventional threshold fire alarm systems.
That is when addressable analog systems will be implemented more often and become cheaper.
It is necessary to change our attitude to fire alarm systems and learn to perceive them not as a set of hardware and electronics, but as part of the environment, the part that ensures our safety.
Perceive them as an intelligent organism that will help to survive in emergency situations and preserve what has been developed over the years, which will detect danger in time and warn about it in time, and in some cases will help to effectively resist it.
So why is addressability important in fire alarm systems?
Of course, an address is the ability to accurately identify a detector in the system. But this is if we consider it from the point of view of the system equipment.
In this sense, addressability is considered as a parameter that facilitates system maintenance.
At the same time, the address is the exact territorial location of a specific fire zone on the site, clearly linking it to a specific room or even a point in the room; it is the exact location of a specific actuator on the site.
And this already allows us to talk about the effectiveness of the response.
The larger the facility, the more acute the issue of prompt response to fire signals. The worse the personnel on duty at the facility are trained, the greater the risk of insufficient accurate and unambiguous information received by this personnel.
But in addition to this, the presence of addresses in the detectors allows you to determine other important points that many try not to notice — the speed of fire development and the direction of its spread.
When 2, 3,…5,…10 detectors are triggered in the threshold loop, you still will not see the direction of fire spread.
For you, these 10 detectors are just one fire zone at best. But it can cover up to 5 rooms. So in which of them is the fire and in which direction is it spreading?
The same can be said about determining the speed of fire spread.
In threshold systems, you will see the «Attention» signal when the first detector is triggered, and after a while the «Fire» signal when the second, third are triggered.
You can even record this time manually.
And then what? How does the fire spread further? Especially if it spreads quickly. A system with conventional non-addressable detectors does not see this.
Of course, in the event of a fire, you can mobilize everyone at the facility, grab a hose and run God knows where, trying to put out something along the way.
But won't such actions cause panic instead of fighting the fire and cause significant harm?
What if this is a false alarm of an unreliable cheap alarm?
Should I still run with a hose and evacuate people?
How many times can I run like this?
What about at night, when there are no people at the facility and when one duty officer must both receive the signal and respond, especially when he is monitoring the situation at a large multi-story facility with an incredible number of rooms and corridors?
I'm not sure that a regular threshold, even a very high-quality fire alarm system, will be of good help in this matter.
As for addressable systems, there are many more possibilities here.
Currently, domestic equipment includes solutions that ensure the effective operation of an addressable analog fire alarm system in tandem with video cameras, when an alarm in a specific zone (from a specific detector) turns on the corresponding video camera and broadcasts video in real time from the detector's triggering zone to the duty officer's console.
This allows the operator to instantly assess the situation and take appropriate measures without going out to the trigger zone. Precious time for emergency situations is not lost. Such coordinated work is difficult to imagine in threshold systems.
In addressable systems, video cameras can be «tied» to at least each detector, but in threshold systems, it is necessary to allocate an entire loop for this.
Addressable systems are certainly more difficult to configure than conventional ones, but I am sure that this is not a good reason not to implement addressable systems and not to increase the level of security of facilities.
It is necessary to encourage designers and installers to improve their professional level by mastering and switching to modern and efficient systems. So that their professional level grows constantly.
These professionals will then become a source of new ideas for equipment manufacturers, giving impetus to its further development.
Thus, by developing each other, we will be able to create advanced equipment.
There is no such thing as too much information for the purposes of ensuring people's safety.
And it is hardly worth reproaching addressable systems for being too informative.
You just need to work with the information correctly and not display the serial number of the detector to the concierge, but provide him with only the necessary and sufficient information for response.
Domestic addressable systems have a whole arsenal of tools for displaying and presenting information about events and the state of fire zones in a convenient form.
This includes text information on line LCD displays, and LED panels that can display the status of each detector, each zone, room, point of the object, and graphic information in the form of object plans on monitors, including touch screens.
It is incorrect to say that addressable systems display too much information. They provide wide opportunities in this regard — yes.
But at each facility these capabilities can be used individually and in the volume that is necessary for the given facility, for the given service personnel.
Do not display all the information, display only the necessary one. And the level of duty officers for working with fire alarm systems must be ensured accordingly through their training and instruction. There is no need to artificially make the duty officers' work easier where it is impossible to do so. They perform very responsible work.
Untrained personnel will not be able to cope even with a system consisting of a single light bulb.
Now it is worth dwelling in more detail on what the word «analog» means in detectors and what it gives.
Analog means that the detector registers and transmits to the control and monitoring device all current values of the parameter it monitors, and not just a «Fire» signal when a critical threshold is reached, as happens in threshold systems.
That's basically all this term means, but this is the essential difference between threshold and addressable analog fire alarm systems.
It is due to this property of addressable analog detectors that the decision in such systems is made by the device, not the detector. Since for each zone in the device (and not in the detector!) the threshold of the monitored parameter can be arbitrarily set significantly lower than the critical value, upon reaching which conventional threshold detectors issue a «Fire» signal.
Due to this, addressable analog fire alarm systems are called early fire detection systems.
Since the device really receives from its detectors complete information about the fire situation at the facility and its slightest changes.
At the same time, settings can be made in the device that will track not only the thresholds, but also the rate of increase of the controlled parameter — its differential.
Which makes the system even more flexible and intelligent, which allows for even more reliable and quick registration of a fire in progress.
It is necessary to note another important property of addressable analog fire alarm systems — the resistance of their loops to damage. To ensure such resistance, line isolators are used in them.
In some systems, they are implemented in the detector bases, in others — directly in each detector.
In this way, systems are built in which, in the event of a single damage to the loop, not a single detector is “lost.”
In the event of double damage, only the segment located between the damages is lost.
In threshold systems, even in the event of a single damage, the entire loop does not work.
Addressable fire alarm systems are already proving their advantage over conventional threshold systems in Russia, because they are the ones that are being used to organize fire monitoring systems for socially significant facilities.
And this is no accident. In such systems, signals are automatically sent via various communication channels to the control panel of the duty dispatch service (DDS) of the corresponding district of the city.
And it is clear that the response time is of great importance here, which depends on the completeness and accuracy of the information received from the facility.
Since the emergency response team arriving to put out the fire is interested not only in what facility the fire started, but also in what exact location of the facility it started and in what direction it is spreading, there is no alternative to addressable systems here.
To summarize, we can list several significant advantages of addressable analog fire alarm systems over conventional threshold ones:
1. Accurate determination of the location of the fire.
2. Early detection of the fire.
3. Determining the rate of fire spread
. 4. Determining the direction of fire spread.
5. Stability of the system operation in case of loop damage.
6. Operational video monitoring of the situation in alarm zones.
7. Ease of installation and cost reduction.
8. Self-diagnostics of the system.
The disadvantage of addressable analog systems can be considered the economic inexpediency of their use at small facilities.
The complexity of configuring the system could be considered a drawback, but this work is done only once.
And it's only scary when you don't know the equipment. When you work with it every day, you don't notice it.
After all, adjusters don't complain about access control systems where you have to register thousands of passes, assign authority to each of them, determine the time intervals for the passes, register all access points and zones.
At the same time, installation of addressable systems is simpler than threshold systems, it is carried out faster and the consumption of cable products is also significantly less.
Taking this into account, which system is generally cheaper for the customer is still a moot point.
Especially if the object is large.
As for the cost of addressable analogue fire alarm systems, its reduction should not be associated with increased competition at the present time. The development of such systems is indeed accompanied by huge costs, which must be taken into account in the cost of production.
And competition will not give anything here — no one will work at a loss.
Competition is more likely to lead to the emergence of a large number of low-quality and cheap equipment with reduced functions, but this will not affect the cost of high-quality systems in any way.
Just as today there are threshold smoke detectors for 100 rubles of dubious quality and for 300 rubles with a self-testing function.
Reducing the price of addressable-analog systems is possible only if the scale of application of such systems is expanded.
The more of them are implemented, the better the conditions for reducing the price will be.
The fact that the cost of a threshold detector is practically the same as an addressable one is a misconception.
Take the simplest threshold detectors.
They are still made without processors using circuitry that is 30 years old, with a transistor key instead of a relay.
And such a solution is significantly cheaper than a detector on a microprocessor.
And even a microprocessor is not all the same — you won't be able to build a fully functional addressable analog detector on the cheapest one.
In addition, the microprocessor must be provided with appropriate protection so that it operates stably, in particular, does not fail from static discharges.
And this is only what concerns the circuitry, and there are also costs for the development of protocols, the interface part, algorithms for receiving, processing and transmitting data.
All this must be taken into account when discussing the cost of detectors, and any other equipment when comparing.
Believe me, it is not only money that motivates manufacturers to develop new equipment, but also the understanding that new, albeit more complex, equipment makes it possible to reach the next, higher level of ensuring the safety of objects and people.
In this regard, I would like to wish all participants in the fire safety process, regardless of what equipment each uses, to put at the forefront not the cost of the equipment, but the safety of people and the safety of objects.