Monitor your fire detection systems alongside your security data
Fire panels are an integral part of enterprise life-safety systems, connecting to a multitude of monitoring and control devices throughout your facility. While essential, fire panels generate even more sensor information that must be monitored to be useful.
Traditionally, these devices are monitored on distinct applications, resulting in a very siloed view of life-safety and security functionalities: one platform for fire panel alarms, another for video monitoring, another still for access control and mustering, yet another one for public address... In such situations, operators are bombarded by events and alarms from all sides, making it difficult to filter through the data and focus on what needs to be done.
What if you could consolidate all the data coming in from across your various critical systems in a single platform, reducing alarm fatigue and speeding up emergency response. Now, with Security Center, you can do just that!
Don't wait for the next integration
A typical way of integrating a fire system is to create a custom integration through panel-specific APIs. This results in a fully customized solution for a specific panel, ensuring all desired functionality is brought into the Genetec platform.
However, this method requires significant software development, as well as continuous maintenance to keep up with fire panel software versions. This puts each fire panel integration in competition with an array of other development priorities. Add to that the fact that fire panel certification is highly regionalized, leading to a large number of manufacturers and a fragmented market – coding panel-specific integrations to all these panels is a daunting task.
Connecting fire panels to Security Center
Luckily, there’s an alternative that removes the need for software development, putting the power to integrate into the hands of anyone familiar with Security Center. Thanks to our Industrial IoT integration, system integrators and customers can now create integrations to devices and systems based on standard industry protocols.
This integration to Security Center opens a new frontier for the Genetec ecosystem, allowing one-way communication (and bi-directional for certain protocols) between all manner of devices and Security Center, including many fire panel systems.
So long as the fire panel can communicate over a compatible protocol, it can be configured to sync the status of its various sensors in Security Center as data points. Operators can then see the current state of the sensor, any available data values being read, and change the device state and icon based on configured rules.
Users can then plot data points on maps as dynamic icons representing their current state, configure event-to-actions or trigger incidents based on state changes, and generate reports of data point states and values to investigate or audit after the fact.
Taking integrations into your own hands
Fire panels are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Industrial IoT integration. Consolidating data from other systems and connected devices in one place empowers operators to draw meaningful conclusions and act on information more quickly by presenting their security information within the crucial context of their facility.
This solution can be used to connect to any system or device that communicates over a supported protocol. Through Industrial IoT, partners and customers can connect to the solutions and devices that they use, no matter how local or niche, without waiting on the manufacturers. Once within Security Center, the ways that data can be used and incorporated into their security system is vast, for instance:
- monitoring active machinery in real-time alongside contextual Omnicast™ video
- turning lights on or off, or setting thermostats to a specific value, based on Synergis™ access control events
- prompt operators to make a public announcement about building policy when vaping or other fumes are detected in bathrooms
- launch a dynamic standard operating procedure when a fire is detected to coordinate evacuation, fire suppression, and emergency response
- and much more!
Want to know more?
Check out this video from our partners at Bosch Security demonstrating how to bring their AVENAR panels/FPA 5000 panels into Security Center through OPC Client on our Industrial IoT integration. You can also contact your local RSM to inquire about Industrial IoT protocols and how they can enhance your day-to-day security and operations.
