Trends in Fire Safety Technology Using Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies
▲ Senior Researcher Ryu Eun-mi, Department of Fire Safety Research, KICT
Prologue
Fire safety technology has seen less in the way of advancements than other technologies because of the widespread lack of sensitivity to safety in our society, a low investment in technology development by small manufacturers, and difficulties in developing overseas markets due to differing fire safety standards in each country. Therefore, the convergence of the Fourth Industrial Revolution technology and fire safety technology not only facilitates the maintenance and management of firefighting equipment but can also effectively reduce the damage to life and properties caused by fire by extinguishing a fire more quickly. In addition, it will help to accurately grasp the situation at the site and promptly mobilize resources to the fire scene, thereby increasing the efficiency of firefighting activities and securing the safety of firefighters. Smart fire safety technology can expand the scale of the firefighting market by becoming the basis for advancing into overseas markets. In this article, I would like to briefly introduce the existing fire safety system and the current status of firefighting equipment technology using Fourth Industrial Revolution technology.
Existing Fire Safety Systems
Existing fire safety systems notify the people inside the building, the administrators, and the fire departments of the occurrence of a fire through an automated fire detection system. Following this, the administrators guide people inside the building to safely evacuate, and the firefighters extinguish the fire.
Components of an automatic fire detection system include a receiver, a transmitter, a detector, and an alarm. Receivers are classified into P-type, R-type, and M-type according to the detector and size. The P-type receiver is the most basic type of receivers and is applied to many buildings. Since it uses a common signal method by individual signal lines as a boundary area for signal transmission, the exact location of the fire cannot be accurately identified. On the other hand, the R-type receiver uses a multi-type communication line method and is mainly applied to large-scale complexes or high-rise buildings. Existing fire safety systems have different degrees of fire detection, confirmation, and response depending on which detectors, repeaters, receivers, and transmitters are installed. Recently, when an R-type receiver and an analog detector are used, the location of a fire can be identified in some cases. However, since it is impossible to check information on the growth and spread of a fire after it has occurred, the reality is that there is a lack of fire information that would support the efficient evacuation of people inside.
Trends in Patents for Firefighting System Technologies Using IoT and ICT Technologies
Looking at the trend of patents for firefighting systems using Fourth Industrial Revolution technology, as shown in Figure 2, from 1999 to 2014, the early period of analysis, a slow increase was observed, but from 2015 to the present, it increased rapidly. South Korea holds an approximately 57% share of the related patents, giving it the largest number of patented technologies. Since Korea is leading the overall trend, the overall trend is also showing a rapid increase according to the fast growth in Korean applications filed for patents. However, since the number of patent applications filed by most applicants of Korean nationality is a mere 1 or 2 cases, it is hard to describe this as a situation in which continuous R&D is being conducted in South Korea compared to other countries for firefighting system technology using Fourth Industrial Revolution technology.
Fire Safety System Using Fourth Industrial Revolution Technologies
Conventional receivers make it possible to determine the time and location of a fire, but not to identify the number of people in a building and their locations as well as judge their evacuation routes. Recently, however, IoT-based firefighting system technologies that can collect data in real-time with sensors attached and fire safety response technologies to improve safety and reliability by predicting fires using artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies have been actively researched. In addition, as shown in Figure 3, studies have recently been conducted that seek to predict the growth and spread of fire by installing a gateway in existing fire safety systems to collect fire data and analyze it. These fire safety technologies can provide optimized evacuation routes for people in the building on fire, enable administrators to monitor a fire in real time, and allow firefighters to effectively suppress fires, minimizing the loss of life and damage to property as a result.
Future Direction
When a fire occurs, there is an urgent need for a fire safety system that can identify the exact fire situation within the building, evacuate people within the golden hour, and minimize property damage. Given such conditions, it is expected that fire safety systems using Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies will rapidly grow in the future. However, a fire safety system using Fourth Industrial Revolution technology has limitations in that commercialization is difficult because it must be approved through a verification system, and there are various legal and institutional obstacles, such as the Act on the Protection and Use of Location Information and the Personal Information Protection Act. Therefore, it is necessary to grant a regulatory grace period to the relevant industries so that related technologies can be actively researched while minimizing any problems that could follow the introduction of these technologies.
