John McGrath, Business Development Manager at ACEDES explains how FalconEx™ detects abnormal heat and responds autonomously before ignition can occur.
Industrial fire protection has traditionally focused on detecting the flames of a fire and then suppressing it as quickly as possible. FalconEx™ takes a different approach: identifying abnormal heat early enough to intervene before ignition occurs.
We spoke with John McGrath of ACEDES about why FalconEx™ integrates infrared and visual detection, the importance of autonomous response and how automated targeted cooling differs from systems that rely on remote operators.
Many fire detection systems rely on separate infrared cameras, smoke detectors and flame detectors. FalconEx™ combines infrared and visual imaging. Why did ACEDES take this approach, and what advantages does it provide?
The first question is: what are you actually trying to detect? Smoke and flame detectors are proven technologies, but they detect products of combustion. If you are detecting smoke or flame, ignition has already occurred. FalconEx™ is designed to intervene earlier, during the period when something is becoming dangerously hot but has not yet ignited.
Some competing systems use infrared, smoke and flame detectors, but these are generally separate devices operating independently. Each produces its own alarm rather than contributing to a single, integrated analysis. Simply adding more detectors that are analysed independently may therefore
provide very little advantage in identifying the hazard earlier.
FalconEx™ takes a different approach. It combines infrared and visual imaging, with both sources analyzed together in real time. The infrared image identifies abnormal heat, while the visual image provides additional information about what is happening in the protected area.
Because these data sources are evaluated together, FalconEx™ gains a cumulative advantage in both detection and output. It is not simply receiving two unrelated alarms; it combines complementary information to make a more informed and reliable decision.
This helps the system distinguish a genuine developing hazard from normal operational heat sources while providing the information needed to locate the hotspot and direct the water monitor.
The important issue is not how many detectors a system has. It is whether their information is integrated, how early the hazard can be identified, and what the system can do with that information. If FalconEx™ has already identified and verified a dangerous hotspot, waiting for smoke or flame would simply allow the event to progress further.
FalconEx™ is described as an autonomous early fire detection and extinguishing system. What does “autonomous” actually mean, and why is it important in a real fire event?
When we say autonomous, we mean that FalconEx™ can go from detecting a hotspot to cooling it without waiting for somebody to make a decision.
The system is continuously scanning. If it detects an elevated temperature, it quickly runs through multiple checks to confirm that it is not a false alarm. Once it determines that action is required, FalconEx™ positions the water monitor and begins cooling or extinguishing the hotspot and the surrounding area. Where necessary, it will additionally sound alarms to warn personnel of an incident and that water will be discharged. That all happens automatically and locally at the facility.
If a system relies on a remote monitoring centre, there are additional stages. An alarm has to reach the centre, somebody has to review it, decide whether it is genuine, determine what is happening and then take action.
None of those individual steps are unreasonable, but they all take time. You are also relying on external communications networks, which may not always be available or reliable. We are trying to intervene at the earliest possible stage. It does not make sense to detect something quickly and then introduce avoidable delays before responding.
Operators and fire professionals can still take manual control when necessary. We are not removing people from the system entirely. What we are removing is the need for a person to be involved in that critical initial decision and response.
How does FalconEx™ distinguish a developing fire risk from normal operating conditions without generating excessive false alarms?
That is one of the biggest challenges with thermal detection. Finding something hot is not particularly difficult. The difficult part is deciding whether it represents a genuine hazard. If you walk around a recycling facility with a thermal camera, you will find all sorts of legitimate heat sources. You have loaders and trucks, hot exhausts, brakes, motors, bearings and process equipment. You also have sunlight, reflections and changing environmental conditions.
You obviously do not want the fire monitor operating every time a loader enters the building. That is where the configuration and the algorithms behind FalconEx™ become very important. We can define different areas and operating parameters, so the system understands what temperatures and conditions are acceptable in a particular part of the facility and what requires further action.
One point that is important to us is that we do not use artificial intelligence to make those decisions.
FalconEx™ uses deterministic algorithms. In simple terms, if you give the system the same inputs and conditions, it will make the same decision every time. For a safety system, there is a real advantage to that predictability. We can understand why a particular decision was made and configure the system around the facility’s actual operating environment.
Ultimately, you have to balance early detection with reliability. A system that detects everything but constantly generates false or nuisance alarms is not useful because people will stop trusting it, and we have more than 30 years of experience perfecting that balance and eliminating false alarms.
What are the key differences between FalconEx™’s automated targeted extinguishing and systems that rely on a remote operator to manually aim and control the monitor?
The biggest differences are speed, consistency and removing human limitations from the initial response. With a remotely-operated system, an alarm is sent to somebody who looks at a video image, decides what is happening and manually aims the monitor at the target.
With FalconEx™, the system has already calculated the hotspot’s position. It knows where the target is and can automatically position the monitor and begin cooling. At the same time, it can send an alert out via email or SMS to key personnel as well as alerting the emergency services if required.
“If FalconEx™ has already identified a dangerous hotspot, waiting for smoke or flame simply allows the event to progress further”
There is also a very practical problem with controlling a water monitor through a video feed. Once you start flowing a significant amount of water, you create spray, mist and water droplets. Those can obscure the same camera the remote operator is using to aim the monitor. The operator can therefore end up trying to keep the water on target while the discharge from the monitor makes it increasingly difficult to see that target.
FalconEx™ does not depend on maintaining that conventional visual picture. The target coordinates have already been established, and the monitor is automatically positioned using those coordinates. The infrared system continues scanning the rest of the protected area while the cooling or extinguishing cycle is underway. Once the cycle is complete, it determines whether further action is required. If multiple hotspots are present, FalconEx™ can identify and queue them for an automatic response while the first hotspot is being addressed.
That is an important distinction. We are not asking somebody hundreds or thousands of miles away to watch a screen and manually fight a fire. We are identifying a developing hotspot and applying cooling water to that specific location automatically, before it becomes something much more serious.
How has FalconEx™ been designed to address these risks around cybersecurity and system availability?
This is becoming a much bigger conversation with customers, and understandably so. Every time you connect another system to the outside world, particularly through a customer’s corporate network, you potentially introduce another cybersecurity consideration.
One of FalconEx™’s advantages is that its critical functionality is local. The detection software, decision-making algorithms and control of the extinguishing equipment are all located at the facility. We do not need a cloud service or an operator in an external monitoring centre to decide whether the system should respond.
FalconEx™ also does not require permanent third-party access through the customer’s corporate firewall to perform its primary fire protection functions.
If there is a problem with the internet connection, we do not want the facility’s ability to detect and respond to a developing fire hazard to be compromised. From an IT perspective, if you do not need to create an external route into the network, that is also one less exposure for the cybersecurity team to manage.
It comes back to the philosophy behind the system: detect the developing problem early, make the decision locally and respond immediately without unnecessary external dependencies.
That is really the question we are asking facility owners and fire protection professionals to consider: if you can see something becoming dangerously hot and automatically cool it, why wait?
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