Siemens (n.d). The
true cost of false fire alarms. https://new.siemens.com/uk/en/company/stories/infrastructure/the-true-cost-of-false-fire-alarms.html
This article focuses on the cost of false alarms and
the human risk that comes along with it in the United Kingdom (UK). From an
evaluation made from Home Office statistics, there were a total of around
226,000 false alarms in the year of 2017/18, which is 41% of the total alarms
raised. Whenever a fire alarm is activated, the fire service sends a team out regardless
if the alarm is false or not. This meant that there would be lesser available
firefighting teams that could attend to genuine fires quickly, which could
result in dire outcomes such as fatalities. The article also states that even
though 75% of automatically generated fire alarms in the UK are false, efforts
are being made to tackle this issue in the form of smart technology such as
multi-sensor devices.
The article provides a useful platform for our
research project on fire sensors for HDBs, as it gives insight to the potential
harm of false alarms as well as their would-be solutions, something we hope to achieve
in our research project. From a test that was conducted between a traditional
smoke detector and an intelligent device, the report found that the intelligent
devices were more discerning and reacted slower to false stimuli without
compromising the speed of reaction to real fire threats therefore reducing potential
fatalities. While the research focuses on the unnecessary call-outs made by the
huge number of commercial and industrial premises that are fitted with
automatic alarm detection systems in the UK, the article still provides useful
information and statistics on the potential risk of false alarms as well as
technologies to tackle that issue, which is a relevant and useful aspect of our
research project.
