Fire alarm system integration is a core part of modern building safety management. Its essence is to break the "information island" formed by the traditional fire protection system operating alone. With the help of data fusion and command linkage with building automation and security systems, an intelligent security system with "early detection, fast warning, linkage, and traceability" can be built. This is not only a technical upgrade, but also a change in the concept of security management from passive response to active prevention. Successful integration can significantly improve the speed and accuracy of emergency response, optimize operation and maintenance management, and mine the long-term value behind the data. In the following, we will start from the six most critical issues in actual operation, and then analyze the core points of fire alarm integration in depth and carefully.
How to integrate fire alarm systems with building management systems
Integrating fire alarm systems into building management systems is crucial to improving the efficiency of comprehensive building management. Integration is not simply about connecting, but using a flexible gateway solution to transform communication protocols specifically used by fire protection systems, such as the ISP-IP protocol, into open standard protocols that can be recognized by the building management system, such as OPC UA. Such protocol conversion achieves two-way communication of data.
The building management system can receive fire alarm information and equipment status information, and within the scope of authorization, can carry out specific operations for the fire protection system, such as remotely shutting down a certain detector group during maintenance. Such deep integration lays the foundation for centralized monitoring and unified scheduling. For those existing buildings, this gateway solution has the advantage that it is completely independent of the original fire alarm system. There is no need to make changes to the certified fire system itself to achieve modernization and upgrade, protecting the original investment.
What communication protocols and standards are used for fire protection system integration?
Unified or convertible communication protocols and standards are relied upon to achieve system integration. At present, the industry is rapidly moving forward in the direction of standardization. "Fire Alarm Controller" (GB 4717-2024), the latest national mandatory standard, will be implemented on May 1, 2025. One of its important revisions is to standardize the communication protocol, formulate the CAN/RS485 bus communication standard protocol, and also add the Internet of Things interface specification, aiming to fundamentally improve the interconnection performance between devices from different manufacturers.
When actually carrying out integration projects, multi-layer protocol methods are generally used for various existing systems. Most of the facilities responsible for fire protection at the bottom use proprietary bus protocols. At the level of system integration, open protocols occupy a dominant position. In addition to OPC UA, OPC UA, and other technologies are also being used under different conditions. For the relevant national regulations "Compatibility Requirements for Automatic Fire Alarm System Components" that are in the process of being revised, after it is released, compatibility will be further defined and unified from a component perspective, thereby reducing integration obstacles. Choosing a protocol with outstanding compatibility and compliance with future standards is the basic key to ensuring that the system can be used normally for a long time.
How does fire alarm integration realize intelligent linkage control?
The most intuitive demonstration of the value of an integrated system is intelligent linkage control. Once a fire detector confirms a fire, the system not only issues an alarm, but also executes a series of preset response procedures on its own, just like the fire alarm controller can automatically start the sprinkler fire pump after receiving the signal. At the same time, the system can send instructions to the building management system through the integrated gateway to automatically shut down the air-conditioning and fresh air system in the fire area to avoid the spread of smoke, and unlock the access to the evacuation passage.
A more advanced integration solution can achieve linkage between multi-dimensional data and provide global procurement services for weak current intelligent products! For example, the AI intelligent safety management platform can automatically correlate fire alarm signals with video surveillance images of corresponding areas, personnel entry and exit records, and equipment operating status (such as whether non-fire power supplies have been cut off), and push comprehensive information to the command center in a timely manner to assist in formulating the best rescue plan. In compliance with fire protection regulations, the linkage logic design must be strict. For example, the pre-action system requires the signal linkage of two independent smoke detectors, or the signal linkage of one smoke detector plus a manual alarm button.
How integrated systems handle massive amounts of data and ensure real-time performance
Various data sources, such as smoke sensors, temperature sensors, video surveillance, and equipment operations, are accessed by integrated systems. There is the possibility of generating terabytes of data every day, which poses challenges to processing efficiency and real-time performance. In order to ensure that the core fire alarm can provide immediate response, the system generally adopts an architecture such as "edge computing + cloud collaboration". At the endpoint (edge) of data collection, computing nodes will perform preprocessing on the original data. For example, only key frames and abnormal events in the video will be extracted, and redundant data that appears during normal operation of the device will be filtered out, thus greatly reducing the amount of data transmitted over the network.
At the platform level, a distributed computing framework is relied upon to carry out parallel processing of tasks. At the same time, the system uses intelligent scheduling algorithms to prioritize tasks to ensure that emergency tasks such as fire alarms can exclusively occupy computing resources and achieve millisecond-level response; while non-urgent tasks such as historical data statistics are run in the background. Data storage also adopts a hierarchical strategy. Recent high-frequency access alarm data is stored in high-speed storage, while long-term historical data is archived in low-cost storage, achieving a balance between performance and cost.
What are the safety and compliance challenges of fire protection system integration?
While integration brings convenience, it also brings severe security and compliance challenges. The primary issue is data security. Fire alarm data, video information, equipment operating parameters, etc. are related to privacy and even business secrets. Therefore, the system must implement full-link encryption from transmission to storage. Encryption protocols such as TLS must be used for data transmission. Sensitive data storage must be desensitized. A role-based minimum permission access control matrix must be constructed. All operations must retain audit logs that cannot be tampered with.
Compliance requirements are also very strict. For integrated solutions, it must be ensured that the independence and reliability of the fire protection system itself will not be affected. According to specifications, the fire linkage control bus should adhere to the principle of "private network only". For large-scale projects, adopting a situational bus design method that separates the alarm loop and the linkage loop can prevent the entire line from being paralyzed due to a single fault, and is more in line with the strict requirements related to high reliability. In addition, the design work of the entire system, equipment selection and construction-related matters must be consistent with mandatory national standards such as the "Fire Alarm Controller" and relevant laws and regulations such as the "Data Security Law".
What is the development trend of fire alarm integration in the future?
Fire alarm integration is evolving in the direction of "smart firefighting". The key is to shift from selling a single product to providing continuous safety services. In the future, the scope of integration will exceed traditional alarm and linkage. For example, a new generation of fire detectors may have more built-in sensors that can be used to monitor environmental parameters such as air temperature and carbon monoxide concentration. The corresponding data can be used by the building management system to optimize air conditioning and fresh air control to achieve "room automation" and thereby reduce the deployment expenditure of additional sensors.
The business model is changing, and the focus of market value is shifting from one-time hardware sales to cloud platform services, continuous operation and maintenance, risk assessment, and data services linked to insurance. What this means is that a successful integrator is not just a connector of equipment, but also a provider of integrated solutions that can integrate "front-end sensing equipment + data center + operation services". With the help of the data accumulated by the integrated platform, in-depth analysis can be carried out to predict the life of equipment, identify risk patterns, and ultimately achieve a fundamental transformation of safety management from "extinguishing fires after the event" to "pre-warning".
When you are in the planning or operation and maintenance of a building project, would you prefer to choose an independent fire protection system that can be deployed once and for all, or are you more willing to invest in building an integrated platform that can continue to expand and connect with more smart services in the future? What specific considerations did you base on making this choice?
Leave a Reply