AI-based warning system S.A.F.E designed to spot early signs of smoke and fire

Designed to alert on the first instances of smoke and fire, S.A.F.E by the team from Highlight Parking Systems hopes to support early detection and reduce the consequent damage an event may cause.

The S.A.F.E (Smoke and Fire Early Warning) system has been built by Highlight Parking Systems. The software is said to utilise artificial intelligence (AI) to quickly detect the first instances of smoke and/or fire, and to send alerts in the form of SMS, email and audible sirens.

According to the manufacturer, the system installs onto ‘any existing or newly installed camera system’, where the AI will receive a feed from these cameras and analyse to spot the signs of smoke or fire. Processing can take place either by an onsite server or via the vendor’s cloud-based API, which doesn’t require a physical server installation.

When first installed, the AI will go through a ‘learning’ programme to understand its environment, designed to rule out false detections from shadows, wall colours, lighting conditions or other external factors.

Alerts contain a link to the detection event in SMS or email, which can then be seen live by the user, or multiple users, to ensure several of those responsible can be made aware of an event.

Installation at Severn Trent car park in Coventry

S.A.F.E has been installed in the Severn Trent Water Head Office in Coventry, UK. Already using Highlight’s Bay Monitoring Car Parking Management System in their staff car park, S.A.F.E was shown to reduce the detection time of a fire from 12 minutes to 12 seconds, according to Highlight.

Installed in parallel with the existing camera-based bay monitoring system, senior staff have been added to the SMS and email alert list, as well as having a siren on a PC set up in the security office.

Robert Harrison, Director at Highlight Parking Systems, said: “As the fire brigade rightly say, the quickness in alerting and response to any fire is critical. We’ve got our response times down to seconds with the S.A.F.E system, giving a valuable amount of time for emergency procedures to be implemented, fire service responders to turn up on site and deal with a situation, hopefully before it becomes out of control.”

S.A.F.E is designed to work alongside and complement an existing fire alarm system. The solution has been nominated at this year’s Security and Fire Excellence Awards as a finalist in the Security or Fire Solution Innovation of the Year.

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