The excerpt below is from the “Open-area Smoke Image Detection–Smoke Detection Innovation and Advancements for Large, Open Spaces” white paper by
Riazi writes:
“The fire and smoke detection industry is highly driven by fire and building codes, maintained in a conservative manner, that deal with issues of safety. According to the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA), on average in the United States in 2009, someone died in a fire every 175 minutes and someone was injured every 31 minutes. NFPA studies further show that fire departments responded to an estimated 1.3 million fires in 2009, which resulted in an estimated $12.5 billion in property loss. For decades, building codes have been mandated to protect public health, safety and general welfare, as they relate to the construction and occupancy of buildings and structures.”
“Depending on the building type, installation of fire and smoke detectors must comply with the requirements set by standards organizations such as the NFPA. Although these codes and standards continue to sustain the stability of the fire and smoke detection market, they also limit the innovation of systems due to the cautious nature in adopting advanced technologies. The challenge for market participants is to capitalize on new technologies and overcome the limitations of existing conventional detectors, while conforming to conservative industry standards. Despite these barriers, and driven by an increasing end-user demand for innovative solutions, the fire and smoke detectors market has managed to transition from conventional to more intelligent and sophisticated products and systems.”
“Very Early Warning Smoke Detectors (VESDA), visual flame detection, and laser detection are a few technologies that have contributed to the radical change in the outlook of the fire and smoke detection market. Currently, most technical advances are produced to address the push from end-users for more adept and easy to deploy fire and smoke detection solutions. For large, open spaces, such as hotel atriums and shopping centers, there still exists tremendous potential for vision-based fire detection systems. Airport terminals, shopping centers, libraries and similar large, open spaces are characterized by high ceilings and irregular shapes that challenge the performance of traditional fire and smoke detectors.”
The entire white paper is available from Frost & Sullivan upon request.
