Traditional fire alarm systems have three main functions: detecting, responding and notify. Although these basic functionalities are the same, different aspects such as size, complexity and current regulations will vary greatly based on where the system are installed, from office buildings, hotels and elementary schools to cruise ships and oil facilities.
One of the biggest challenges facing the fire alarm industry today is to keep up with the rapid technological developments in digitalization while meeting the security requirements that apply to such products. Technology developed “yesterday” will not meet the requirements for “tomorrow”, and in the global market there is a constant drive for new features, industry demands and cyber security threats. The future fire alarm system cannot be affected by rapid change in technology or critical components being discontinued.
Through the ISESAP project, Autronica Fire & Security and SINTEF Digital have started to develop a new fire alarm platform that combines digitized services with the strict security and safety requirements applicable to such systems. This will break new ground in the industry and facilitate a number of new services, e.g. using the large amounts of data collected by thousands of fire sensors in an office building along with machine learning for predictive maintenance of the actual fire installation or 3rd-party services such as energy use optimization and building automation.
In order to be able to offer digitized services while safeguarding both security and safety of the system, it is necessary to use various advanced methods and expand the research front within the domain. Solutions for computer communication, containerization and real-time systems with multiple levels of criticality will be used so that safety-critical and certified parts of the system can be run on the same computer as non-certified services. To safeguard the security aspects throughout the project, the SafeScrum method developed by SINTEF Digital will be used.
The project will result in multiple Minimum Viable Products (MVPs) that demonstrate the essential features of the new fire alarm platform.