Hospital under the sign of SAGITTARIUS — addressable analog fire alarm system.
A three-person account of equipping City Clinical Hospital No. 15 named after O. M. Filatov with the STRELETS® radio system. At a socially significant facility with a total area of 65,000 m2, a wireless addressable analog fire alarm system was installed in 3 weeks by 6 specialists without taking the hospital out of operation. Representatives of the developer company, the design and installation organization, and the Ministry of Emergency Situations talk about their experience working with the radio system and its main features.
Manufacturer – Argus-Spectr company M. S. LEVCHUK, Head of Marketing and Sales Department:
Trust in wireless technologies is growing every day. Over the past five or six years, we have already stopped noticing how convenient it is to use a mobile phone; no one is surprised by the terms Wi-Fi, GPRS or Bluetooth.
Thanks to the new element base, modern wireless technologies have come to fire alarm systems. A comprehensive analysis of the capabilities of the latest generation radio systems shows:
their greater survivability compared to wired systems,
cost-effectiveness,
practical feasibility of use, especially at facilities with a continuous 24 x 365 work schedule.
The wireless fire alarm and addressable analog fire alarm and notification system STRELETS®, which was developed and is manufactured by our company, is a full-fledged alternative to wired systems.
Thanks to the «non-burning» radio channel communication between the devices, it is possible to monitor the spread of smoke in the premises in real time. Traditional wired alarm systems can fail at the very beginning of a fire, while the radio channel is resistant to fire. STRELETS® allows you to promptly manage the evacuation of people in accordance with the developing situation, which is especially important for hospitals, schools and nursing homes.
Moreover, due to the absence of wires, STRELETS® is also free from problems with false alarms associated with induced electromagnetic interference in communication lines, connecting lines and signaling loops of wired systems.
The key technical characteristics of the system are microcellular topology, 10 radio channels with automatic selection in the 433 and 868 MHz ranges, dynamic routing of information transmission, algorithms for combating interference and fading. These and other technical solutions allow achieving high capacity, interference immunity, reliability of the system and ensure its operation in the operating temperature range from -30 to +55 °C for a long period of battery life (5 years + 2 months).
The advantages of the STRELETS® radio system have been repeatedly appreciated by both the community of security specialists (winning exhibitions «Security Technologies», MIPS, SFITEX, etc., export of the radio system to European countries) and at the state level: on May 7, 2009, during a working meeting with the head of the Ministry of Emergency Situations S.K. Shoigu, the Prime Minister of the Russian Federation V.V. Putin supported the implementation of the radio system at healthcare and educational facilities.
Design and installation organization «Automated surveillance systems» — S. I. BELOZEROVA, executive director:
City Clinical Hospital No. 15 named after O. M. Filatov is located at the following address: Moscow, Veshnyakovskaya Street, Building 23. The main building of the hospital complex is a fourteen-story building with a total area of 65,000 m2.
Project implementation time: 3 weeks (November – December 2008).
Number of employees involved: 6 specialists.
Composition of the installed system:
«Aurora-DR» (smoke addressable analogue fire alarm radio detector) – 1493 pcs.
«Aurora-TR» (heat addressable analogue fire alarm radio detector) – 65 pcs.
IPR-R (manual addressable fire radio alarm) – 64 pcs.
RROP (fire alarm radio expander) – 72 pcs.
RR-M (radio expander-router) – 17 pcs.
PU-R (radio channel control panel) – 5 pcs.
UOO-GSM-C1 (auto-dial device via GSM channel) – 5 pcs.
ON “ARM SAGITTARIUS” (automated workstation) – 2 sets.
The fire alarm system installed in the hospital consists of five STRELETS® radio systems with dynamic routing, combined into one single system based on the hardware and software complex «ARM STRELETS».
STRELETS® compares favorably with other radio systems in its ease of commissioning and maintenance:
essentially, it is only necessary to place pre-programmed radio devices at the facility, using significantly fewer workers;
addressable analog fire smoke radio detectors «Aurora-DR» can be cleaned as needed. The two-way protocol in the radio system allows you to quickly assess the current dustiness and make a list of only those detectors that are subject to mandatory cleaning.
Technical monitoring of the facility is carried out using UOO-GSM-C1 autodialers, which allow information on the state of radio system devices to be transmitted via a GSM channel with an address accuracy to the «01» center and in the form of SMS messages to the mobile phone of the person responsible for fire safety at the hospital and to the service organization.
The duty officer at the fire station in the hospital building can display floor plans of the facility on the computer screen indicating the location of detectors, displaying detailed information on the state of each device and, in the event of a fire, tracking the dynamics of the fire.
The cost of equipping the facility with a radio channel alarm system does not exceed the cost of installing a similar wired system, and the efficiency (according to our estimates, turnkey installation is carried out 5 times faster) and the ability to operate the hospital during the installation of the alarm determined the choice in favor of the STRELETS® wireless system.
The specificity of the hospital complex also implies difficult access to certain rooms (operating rooms, intensive care, etc.) and the need to maintain sterility. It should be noted that during the entire period of operation, the radio system has never generated false alarms and operates stably in the presence of a large number of various medical equipment.
V. I. ZYKOV, Head of the Communications Department of the Academy of the State Fire Service of the Ministry of Emergency Situations of Russia:
The time of a formal approach to building fire safety systems is over. In July 2008, the President of the Russian Federation signed Federal Law No. 123-FZ «Technical Regulations on Fire Safety Requirements», which entered into force on May 1, 2009. The law is the basis for the formation of a new regulatory framework in the field of fire safety.
Now fire protection systems, primarily signal lines to each (!) fire alarm, must function for the entire time required for the complete evacuation of people to a safe place (Articles 82 and 103 of the Technical Regulations), i.e. it is necessary to maximize their reliability and survivability.
Despite the possibility of implementing more stringent fire safety requirements using wired technical means, now communication lines in fire alarm, notification and automation systems can be organized using a radio channel.
Thus, one of the possible options for implementing the requirements of the Technical Regulations is the use of professional wireless addressable analog fire alarm systems with a two-way exchange protocol.
The STRELETS® wireless system allows for the full implementation of the requirements of the new regulatory framework for fire alarm and notification systems with minimal costs, in particular increased protection against electromagnetic interference, the ability to adaptively select the operating frequency, the presence of dynamic routing, which allows the use of backup and bypass routes (channels) when it is impossible to deliver fire signals along the main routes.
The radio system automatically, without the participation of personnel at the facility, transmits signals to the «01» service, which significantly reduces the response time. Within a split second, a diagram of the facility appears on the duty officer's monitor screen indicating the access routes to the hospital and the location of hydrants in the adjacent territory. Similar information is sent to the mobile headquarters bus. When the next alarm is triggered, the information is updated.
Conclusions:
New requirements of the Technical Regulations and the economic crisis are fundamentally changing the situation on the security systems market. Equipping facilities with reliable wireless alarm and notification systems is not only faster, but also more economical both during installation and operation. Even a small design and installation company with a limited staff of specialists can afford more orders and larger facilities, ensuring high turnover of funds and flexibility of doing business.
Experience in operating the STRELETS® radio system has already been gained at many facilities for various purposes. Among them are restricted access facilities of the Federal Border Service of the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs and the Ministry of Defense; state and commercial energy facilities; healthcare institutions (more than 60 hospitals in Moscow alone) and educational institutions (more than 100 schools in the Ural and Central regions); sports facilities in the south of Russia; cultural facilities (the Hermitage, the Tretyakov Gallery, the Suzdal Museum of Wooden Architecture, the Central House of Writers); shopping malls and bank branches; luxury housing and cottage villages.
STRELETS® – high reliability and survivability:
two-way protocol;
dynamic routing;
“non-burning” connection between all devices.
STRELETS® – high turnover of funds:
10-fold reduction in the volume of installation work;
0 costs for consumables;
1 addressable analog fire alarm in the room
STRELETS® – easy maintenance:
more objects to service;
easy redevelopment of premises;
no revision of wires.