Fire Market Report – Staying Ahead of the Flame Game
Higher Level of System Intelligence
A leading trend affecting the life-safety landscape is the general move toward a more advanced, intelligent fire alarm platform, one in which a greater degree of integration, incident details and processing speeds are attainable. The alarm information provided by a typical conventional fire alarm panel is by zone rather than device. An activated smoke detector, for example, will only provide the affected zone, which correlates to a general area or floor. A digital-based addressable system, however, will provide the exact location of the smoke detector involved.
For this reason, more and more fire alarm companies are promoting addressable fire alarm systems. What was once seen as a hard sell is now becoming commonplace as technology-savvy clients seek the powerful features that addressable systems bring to the table. This is especially true of larger buildings where integration combined with advanced intelligence-gathering capabilities is realized.
According to recent research by SSI, more than half of all security contractors are presently installing addressable fire detection solutions, as well as integrated fire/life-safety systems. Other advanced technologies gaining traction in the marketplace include wireless fire detection devices and carbon monoxide detection systems (both deployed by 45 percent of installing companies). However, by a substantial margin, contractors are most intrigued by wireless’ potential, followed by addressability.
Today’s intelligent fire alarm systems turn on advanced data processing, utilizing even more analog information than was available a few years ago. This is especially true of a relatively new breed of addressable technology that most of us have come to know as analog addressable. The analog addressable systems are more high-tech than the simple digital addressable systems. Digital addressable can only identify the location and identity of the device. Analog addressable will do the same with the addition of analog data that rides on the digital data. Analog addressable is a newer, more advanced version of the simple digital addressable.
Power of Analog Addressability
The advent of the di
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