Smart fire monitoring system for a city: design and development

All Fire Alarm Systems essentially operate on the same fundamental principle and framework. It provides audible and visual alarm signals. An alarm is raised if a sensor detects smoke or heat, warns people that there may be a fire, and evacuate the premises immediately. Consequently, concerned individuals may call the fire department to mitigate the emergency at which, at this point of time, the firefighter's Emergency Respond Time (ERT) is vital. ERT is one of the contributing factors to how much fire will consume lives and, or properties. In worst cases, an entire building turns into ashes, lives taken because of a slow ERT. Then there are these casual "false-alarms" caused by the false-positive readings of the installed Fire Alarm Systems. These false alarms cause mass panic and consume firefighters' valuable time and resources. The instances mentioned above are a few reasons why there is a need to implement an efficient city-wide fire alarm system. This study focused on the design, development and testing of a wide-area Smart Fire Monitoring System comprised of major parts, the devices and the system software. Specifically, this study aimed to develop a smart fire alarm device using the Agile Prototyping Methodology (APM) and employ Agile Software Development Methodology (ASDM) for the development of the Smart Fire Monitoring System Software (SFMSS). For the development of the smart fire alarm device, the proponents assembled necessary sensors, electrical components, microcontrollers, and other electrical modules to create a working smart fire alarm device that abled to detect smoke; detect temperature spikes; detect the existence of fire; broadcast a GPS coordinates to the fire department; transmit and receive data through RF signals using long-range radio frequency (RF) module and SMS technology; and, be functional and operational under Low Power mode. Concomitant with this device is its system software, SFMSS, to manage and process the broadcasted data. SFMSS is a centralized system developed for the fire department to monitor the city for a fire outbreak. SFMSS continuously communicates with the fire alarm devices to autonomously monitor fire presence via radio frequency and process SMS notifications containing GPS coordinates, convert them into a readable address, and plot it in a city map in the event of a fire emergency. The proponents conducted a Stress and Reliability Test on the smart fire alarm device and Product Evaluation for Quality, Efficiency, and Usability with the Bureau of Fire Protection Region 6 for the entirety of the system.