Technical fire safety systems: integration trends.
Integration has long been commonplace in all areas of security systems. However, fire automatic systems are still often perceived as separate. This is partly due to the special attitude towards fire safety on the part of regulatory documents. Indeed, you do security alarms, access control, video surveillance as you see fit. Control of power supply and ventilation — as is convenient and profitable for you. And only fire alarms should not only meet your needs, but also comply with numerous standards. Moreover, fire alarms are subject to regular monitoring by supervisory authorities, and you may not like it if they poke their nose into the integrated security system. Nevertheless, the development of technology and economic reasons increasingly lead to the fact that fire automatics are also included in the general integrated security system.
Within fire automatics, there is also a division into fire alarms and fire extinguishing control systems. They also fall under requirements of varying severity, and therefore fire extinguishing control systems are often made local autonomous, so that the entire alarm system does not fall under the more stringent requirements imposed by regulatory documents on fire extinguishing systems. However, as modern technology becomes cheaper, all these requirements inherited from the middle of the last century can be satisfied very easily. So now centralized fire safety systems are increasingly used, which perform the functions of fire alarms, and at the same time in some rooms and fire extinguishing. The rapid growth in the popularity of addressable fire detectors makes it inappropriate to use an autonomous fire extinguishing system with non-addressable detectors, thereby reducing the quality of the system in the most critical place. In addition, the ability to implement multi-channel fire extinguishing control in an addressable system allows you to use many new functional capabilities. For example, the extinguishing zone with powder or water can be limited to a few square meters around the activated sensors (especially if these are flame sensors, since smoke can spread far). Thus, in a huge warehouse or in a huge car showroom, in the event of a local fire, it is not at all necessary to extinguish the entire area and thereby spoil all the goods.
On the other hand, it should be noted that autonomous fire extinguishing systems are extremely easy to configure: a pair of sensor loops, a pair of pyrotechnic outputs, specialized start-up cancellation inputs. If everything is connected correctly, everything will work on its own. In a large addressable system, you can arbitrarily configure the functions of individual inputs and outputs. This is great, because it allows you to arbitrarily expand the system regardless of how many inputs there are in the room, how many control outputs need to be used, how many alarms and light panels. However, this means that the system should be carefully configured, specifying which outputs should be turned on during the evacuation delay, and which ones during extinguishing, which inputs should activate the system, and which, on the contrary, should stop the start. Alas, this is always the case. Advanced capabilities place increased demands on specialists during commissioning.
The most natural idea of integration is fire alarm with security alarm. This is a natural solution for apartments and cottages, where for economic reasons there is no point in building two different systems, and, fortunately, regulatory documents do not impose any requirements on fire alarm in these systems. Security and fire detectors have similar interfaces and parameters, so they can often be connected to the same control panel or loop controller. However, in non-addressable systems this does not lead to a decrease in the volume of the cable network, because fire alarms must certainly differ from security alarms. In an addressable system, combining security and fire detectors in one loop is quite natural.
As a separate type of integration, it is worth mentioning the connection of the fire alarm system to the notification transmission system (ITS) to the central monitoring station (CMS). This is also an integration, since systems from different manufacturers are connected, often object systems from many different manufacturers are connected to one ITS, even if all of these systems are fire systems. It is in the part of fire alarms that the trend of connecting all systems to the CMS is supported by government agencies, due to which all fire alarm systems are now actively developing towards facilitating the connection to the CMS, and therefore facilitating the integration with any other systems.
Nowadays, central fire alarm systems for residential buildings are installed everywhere in fire departments (or rather, in monitoring centers). Unfortunately, from the technical side, there is only one standard for connecting a central fire alarm system today – Contact-ID. However, it was originally designed for transmission via dial-up telephone lines (with dial-up). Telephone lines are not always reliable, and most importantly – they are not always available in new buildings. A typical solution of the current time is to install radio central fire alarm systems. Sometimes they work via cellular communication (GPRS), but more often according to their own protocols. In fact, it is more than strange to duplicate long-existing cellular networks, actively moving through the 3rd generation to the 4th (they easily transmit megabytes per second) and build specialized incompatible networks for transmitting units of bytes per second. Twenty years ago, when such radio systems were developing in sparsely populated areas of some foreign countries, cellular networks simply did not exist. Now it looks strange. The funniest thing is that it is difficult to even suspect anyone of corruption — the money allocated for the creation of radio-SPI is quite small. I hope this fashion will pass by itself, a single rescue phone number will appear and some departments will not be hostile to the proposals of other departments (especially private companies). However, this will probably not happen before the technical inspection of cars is abolished, and the State Fire Supervision Service is transferred to insurance companies. That is, only when a significant part of officials learns not to consider everyone around them idiots or saboteurs a priori.
Large systems at large facilities are always integrated. But it should be understood that integration can be different. Not in the sense of good or bad, but implemented differently. At different levels of the information system. A very typical integration option (at least very typical for systems from ten years ago) is several independent subsystems integrated in terms of information exchange at the very top level. Sometimes these are literally several computers (one for each system) that are connected to each other or to another additional «integrating» computer. In this way, it is possible to integrate systems that were not originally intended for integration. The result is a common workstation of the dispatch (operator) post and some interaction capabilities. For example, unlocking emergency exits in case of fire or, conversely, blocking all inputs and outputs in case of a security alarm.
This solution even has some advantages. Mainly, each subsystem retains a fair amount of independence and functionality «just in case.» That is, in the event of another subsystem or integrating program failing. But in practice, to implement this advantage at the observation post, it is necessary to install not only an integrated control panel, but also control panels for each of the subsystems, which are there «just in case,» and most of the time simply take up space.
The second option, which is becoming more and more common over time, is integration at the controller level, when one system (usually from one manufacturer) contains controllers oriented towards fire and security alarms, access control, and engineering systems control, and they directly interact with each other via RS485 or LonTalk lines. They are often combined by a higher-level controller or a computer. In this case, the labor intensity of integration (and the labor intensity of system installation in general) is significantly reduced, and at the same time many problems are solved, such as crosstalk from multiple parallel communication lines, information overload of data transmission channels when alarms occur simultaneously in several subsystems, etc.The ultimate case of integration at the lowest level are systems with an addressable loop, which, along with fire detectors, also includes security sensors, some access control devices, and utility monitoring sensors – all on one very low-level line. Such a solution ensures the utmost minimization of the cable network and installation work.
Personally, I think that the very concept of “fire alarm” in a maximum of 20 years will cease to mean a certain set of equipment and will finally become a designation of a certain function. Similar to the well-known fact that the word “watch” has now ceased to mean a device for measuring time, but designates a time-measuring function built into phones, cars, computers, and microwaves (if we abstract from “watch” in the meaning of “platinum trinkets with diamonds”). As for the term “fire alarm”, it will probably also retain such a niche meaning as “a pretext for corrupt machinations”. But the very idea of installing a separate cable network specifically for the sake of fire alarms, I hope, will surprise everyone, just as it surprises me now.