Euralarm, the European trade association for the electronic fire and security sector, has carried out a European study on false alarms. It has been published as a paperback by the German academic publishing company Eric Schmidt Verlag (ESV) and is also available on Amazon. To read the preface, foreword and table of contents, see the ESV website. The work is also available as an ebook.
The study was by a task group from Euralarm, of those in the field of fire safety, including from the UK Robert Yates (member of advisory group) and Graham Simons (author), of the trade body the Fire Industry Association (FIA); with Sebastian Festag from Heaktron, the German fire detection product company, acting as chairman. The study focuses on false alarm data collection and analysis from fire detection and fire alarm systems in selected European countries.
The impact of budget cuts and a perceived high rate of false alarms have lead in some European countries to changes on the typical reaction of fire services. In some countries for example, verification is required before intervention forces are deployed, to avoid unjustified costs. This calculation is however limited to the impact of false alarms on fire services alone: it could lead to an increase of the risk to lives and inflict more cost in overall to society. The study seeks to establish the true cost of false alarms, from country to country.
Evaluation
Through its scientific approach, the study offers a clarification of false alarms. It includes a description of the processes to initiate fire service intervention, formulas to calculate false alarm ratios, as well as a methodology of the overall analysis. A picture is given of selected European countries as regards false alarm: Germany, Great Britain/England, Switzerland, Sweden and Austria/Vorarlberg. The study also contains recommendations and strategies to reduce false alarms, which are based on statistics on fires and, in particular, the number of fire alarms due to detection of actual fires by fire alarm systems, as compared to the false alarm rate.
The Euralarm task force argues that the topic of false alarms must be increasingly integrated into fire protection and fire alarm strategies: handling false alarms must become an active part of the management of a site. The Euralarm study gives recommendations.
