Annotated Summary

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.