After the success of our Impact of COVID-19 on the Fire Industry Report, we delved deeper with our members to identify the next area that they would like a better understanding of. It is clear from these conversations that our members are keen to better understand the Internet of Things (IoT) and how it relates to the fire safety industry. This is why we have launched a survey to start this process.

"To me, this is an incredibly exciting prospect because of its potential to transform the fire industry as we know it. When making informed decisions (be that human or machine), data is everything. The more data we have, the more robust the decision can be. In addition to this, there are now multiple methods to enunciate information (such as alarm messages) to mobile phones, individual’s computer monitors etc. Planned maintenance can be more precise based on the environmental conditions, performance criteria etc.

I have personally been lucky enough to lead a number of innovative teams over the years and have won the coveted Queen’s Award for Innovation for our work on bringing Video Smoke Detection to the mass market in the ’90s. It took years of hard work to get it accepted as a viable option in the arsenal to effectively detect fire and there are clear parallels from Video Smoke Detection of the ’90s to IoT now. The first step in enabling IoT to be utilised is to investigate the current knowledge of members and the wider industry, to see where IoT can be used now and what needs to be done to make its implementation acceptable to the fire safety industry.

I will always support the development of anything that helps increase the level of protection to make people safer from the risk of fire.”                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                               Ian Moore, CEO, FIA.

The FIA is excited to hear if you are working on an IoT project, how you are working to implement it, what barriers you are facing and finally how the FIA can help you overcome these barriers.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/FIAIoT