Following a decision of its Board, Euralarm has welcomed FirePro as new member. The company will join the Extinguishing Section of Euralarm which activities cover automatic extinguishing systems using gas, water, foam, powder and aerosols, oxygen reduction systems, portable equipment and other manual means of fire-fighting as well as fire-fighting agents used in either fixed automatic systems or in portable equipment.

Euralarm’s Services Section reports an important step forward for service providers and end-users of remote services: the very positive vote on the EN 50710, Requirements for the provision of secure remote services for fire safety systems and security systems.

In the case of hazard warnings, it is possible that there are no signs of this hazard at the suspected location of the event. Such cases are also indicated as "false alarms". They occur in diverse environments and in connection with different procedures and technologies. In fire protection, false alarms occur in all alarm paths and are often discussed in the context of installed fire detection and fire alarm systems.

For some years now, the ratio of false alarms related to the number of installations have been reduced by installed fire detection and fire alarm systems through a number of available measures. Most false alarms today are triggered by deceptive alarms.In this case, the systems operate as intended and are triggered by fire-like phenomena through chemical-physical parameters (e.g. vapour and dust).

This group of false alarms is to a large extent a consequence of decisions and actions taken (or not taken) by people in the planning, installation, operation and maintenance of systems. For this reason, the already known measures to avoid false alarms are presented in the Fact Sheet 'Increase fire safety by understanding false alarms'. The Fact Sheet can be downloaded here.

The Spanish Association of Fire Protection Societies, TECNIFUEGO, is a national, nonprofit business association that brings together manufacturers, installers, maintainers, and other fire safety services in Spain. Marta Peraza, general secretary of the association, spoke on the recent developments within TECNIFUEGO.

The European Commission – Directorate General for Internal Market, Industry, Entrepreneurship and SMEs (DG GROW) has tasked a consortium composed of EY and MENON with the performance of a Study on the functions and effects of European standards and standardisation in EU and EFTA Member States.

The study is aimed at understanding how the creation and adoption of European standards affect a series of competitiveness indicators and productivity drivers in ten key industrial sectors (Food and beverages, Chemical products, Electrical equipment, Machinery, Energy and utilities, Ground transport, Air and Space, Medical devices, Defence and ICT) in order to provide relevant insights to help develop timely and market-driven standards as well as to identify the main challenges and opportunities in the current standardisation environment.

https://globaleysurvey.ey.com/jfe/form/SV_88GIBq7nPRmdxEW

Euralarm has released its Annual Report 2020-2021. The report follows the structure of Euralarm, every section and committee of the association summarising their activities over the previous year and, where appropriate, providing forecasts and plans for the future. This year the Annual Report is available as E-book enabling the reader to view the Annual Report online. A copy of the Annual Report can be downloaded here.

A harmonised standard is  a European standard elaborated on the basis of a request from the European Commission to a recognized European Standards Organisation (CEN, CENELEC or ETSI) to develop a European standard that provides solutions for compliance with a legal provision. Manufacturers and other economic operators or conformity assessment bodies can use harmonised standards to demonstrate that products, services or processes comply with relevant EU legislation. Therefore, harmonised standards are also of importance for the fire safety and security industry. Those who want to learn more about standards could join the CEN CENELEC webinar ‘Harmonized European standards: Drafting standards compliant with EU legislation’. The webinar takes place on June 29th, 2021, 14:00 CET. Interested? You can register yourself here.

The AUBE is the largest and oldest conference of its kind in the science and research surrounding fire detection and alarm. This year the event will be organised from September 21-23, 2021. As in 2014 and 2017, the 17th International Conference on Automatic Fire Detection (AUBE ’21) is combined with SupDet; an annual conference on Suppression, Detection and Signaling Research and Applications. It will be either a hybrid event at the University of Duisburg-Essen, Duisburg (Germany) with both on-site and online presentations and discussions or an online-only event. More information on visiting the conference can be found in this Save the Date flyer.

The British Security Industry Association’s (BSIA) video surveillance section has launched an ethical and legal use guide for Automated Facial Recognition (AFR).

The ETSI Seminar is run once a year, to provide an intensive course on ETSI, its organization, structure, ways of working and related subjects. It is targeted at those who are new to ETSI or those who need to develop a deeper understanding of how to work effectively in ETSI. 

Although designed primarily for newcomers to the Institute, the fact that ETSI is constantly evolving means that even those individuals with an extensive experience of the Institute and its work find it beneficial to attend. The Seminar is free of charge to attend and is open to all, members and non-members alike. The webinar is organised on May 20, 2021. Click here to see seminar program or to register. 

Euralarm member SäkerhetsBranschen (Security Industry) is a Swedish industry organization for security companies with over 500 members. The members combined employ 33,000 people and have an annual turnover of 5,7 billion euro. We talked with Joakim Söderström, managing director of SäkerhetsBranschen and chair of the Euralarm Security Section.

The guidance document explaining the differences between approved gaseous extinguishing systems and approved gaseous extinguishing components is now also available in Russian and Lithuanian. The document can  be downloaded here.