Day: December 29, 2020

A network of 19 Axis EN fire panels from UK manufacturer, Advanced, has been installed at the prestigious Wafi Hotel complex and Mall in Dubai. Wafi City is a mixed-use development in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The complex includes a mall, hotels, restaurants, residences, and a nightclub. The ‘city’ is styled in the theme of Ancient Egypt. In total, 19 EN54-approved Axis EN fire panels including integrated fire telephone system, and 7,500 devices have been installed across the US$750 million Wafi Hotel and Mall development project. The site itself comprises a 50 storey, 5 star hotel and serviced apartment tower, in addition to the mall which has undergone a 100,000m² expansion that includes a hypermarket, retail spaces, 19-screen cinema complex and parking. Installed at the hotel, which boasts 501 luxury guest-rooms and 86 suites, a ballroom, numerous conference and hospitality facilities as well as a temperature-controlled pool deck, are 14 4-loop, 2-loop and 1-loop Axis EN fire panels and 5,500 devices. Included in the active fire protection measures for the Wafi Mall, cinema and car park are a further five Axis EN fire panels of 4-loop and 2-loop variants, alongside an additional 2000 devices. Advanced partners Cignetix Systems were responsible for the installation, testing and commissioning of the entire system. Due to the size of the 205,000m² expansion project, Cignetix’s client required a solution capable of delivering reliable and versatile protection across a site with a range of different area uses, and with appropriate false alarm management strategies applied where necessary. Sunil Gopalkrishnan, Managing Director at Cignetix Systems said, “Cignetix installs Advanced fire protection solutions across a number of highrise commercial and residential buildings, retail premises and hotels in Dubai. We find Advanced products both simple to install and easy to configure, so they were the obvious choice when it came to specifying the fire alarm system for this project.” Involved in the product selection process for the fire protection at the Wafi Hotel complex and Mall was R. C. Nair, a veteran in the field of life safety systems and General Manager of the leading, Dubai-based fire contractor company, Spectrum International. During this process R. C. Nair’s involvement added value in concluding the best possible options to meet the specification laid down by the consulting engineers, M/s. Hidi Rae and M/s. Arkiteknik, ensuring the highest standards of protection. In consideration of the site’s false alarm management strategy, a positive alarm sequence has been programmed to effectively reduce unwanted alarms. By introducing verification and investigation delays, qualified staff are able to investigate the source of the fire alarm signal and identify its validity before the fire panel goes into full alarm. These measures help effectively manage false alarms, which can otherwise have significant cost implications on businesses and lead to complacency, compromising safety. Axis EN is EN54 parts 2, 4 and 13 approved and its panels can be used in single-loop, single-panel format or easily configured into high-speed, multi-loop panels in 200 node networks covering huge areas. Advanced products’ ease of installation and configuration as well as the range of peripherals available make it customisable to almost any application. Steve Carroll, General Manager for the Middle East at Advanced said, “We’re thrilled to protect this fantastic addition to Wafi City. With hundreds of thousands of visitors to the Wafi Hotel complex and Mall each year, an Advanced solution provides Cignetix’s client with the peace of mind of knowing that those living, working or relaxing on the development are safe from the threat of fire.” Advanced’s fire telephone solution is ideal for high and low-rise apartment buildings, hotels, universities, government and military sites where local fire departments and emergency personnel need access to fire/ emergency communications. Designed for clear, easy-to-use control, the conventional system benefits from LED status indications showing its operational state – whether the system has a call-in, is connected or is in fault condition. The fire telephone system is compliant with EN54 parts 2 and 4 and can be configured as either a standalone independent system or completely integrated into the Axis EN fire system. Advanced, owned by FTSE 100 company Halma PLC, protects a wide range of prestigious and high-profile sites across the globe – from London’s Shard to Abu Dhabi International Airport and Istanbul’s Hagia Sophia. Halma is a global group of life-saving technology companies with a clear purpose to grow a safer, cleaner, healthier future for everyone, every day.  

All airports face a common challenge – security. There are numerous incidents which can happen at an airport from illegal immigrants being smuggled onto a cargo aircraft, to an unauthorized vehicle smashing through a perimeter fence and colliding with an airport vehicle. A large number of incidents are in fact linked to unauthorized access onto the airfield, either runways or where aircrafts are being loaded or refuelled posing an extremely high risk. In setting up a perimeter protection solution for airports, a multi-layered approach can be used setting different areas and starting beyond the perimeter fence to warn, in advance, of a potential threat. The second area to protect is the actual perimeter fence, where a combination of multiple sensors and technologies is common providing a double or even triple confirmation of an alarm. While this is more effective to ensure no intrusions are missed, the huge level of information presented can become a hindrance, rather than a help. This common scenario for many airports was the trigger for Genetec to develop its Restricted Security Area (RSA) Surveillance module as an extension of its Security Center platform. It has been designed specifically with a view to providing wide area protection and integrating with wide area surveillance technology, including radar and laser detection devices. The solution allows security staff to determine the level of threat for each area, map them, and utilise OPTEX technologies to identify and locate quickly and precisely the point of intrusion. For instance, with Fibre optic fence sensor, zones can be 100m-200m long and will identify people cutting through a fence, crawling under or climbing over. Newer fibre technologies provide point location. A particularly intelligent feature of the system is its ability to ‘fuse’ data (known as ‘target fusion’) coming from multiple sources and confirm an event as a single (i.e., the same) activity rather than a multiple threat. This presents a more meaningful picture to the operator and serves to maximise the benefit of each sensor’s performance characteristics. Thanks to further integration of Genetec’s RSA with OPTEX’s LIDAR laser scanning detectors, an intruder can not only be detected pinpointing the exact location, but also tracked precisely feeding the X and Y coordinates and guiding cameras across different zones so the intruder can be intercepted faster by the security authorities. This deeper integration of OPTEX’s Redscan Series into Genetec’s RSA platform enables intelligent tracking and event categorisation for both vertical (virtual walls) or horizontal detection areas, making it a very precise security system.  

SNCF Réseau, the service provider that manages railway infrastructure in France, in partnership with Capgemini, is deploying an innovative application to optimize the supervision of its rail network in order to increase its performance and meet the growing demand for mobility. Thanks to this digital solution, SNCF Réseau’s teams in charge of the maintenance of over 30,000 kilometers of track, are alerted and activated in real time using a mobile application that geolocates precisely any incidents on the network. The tool will help to improve the regularity of traffic flows, as well as passenger information. The railway network is now remotely monitored and supervised to detect any technical failures in the tracks, signalling, catenaries, level crossings or switches. Different systems work together to detect anomalies and warn maintenance staff, enabling installations to be restored as quickly as possible. A unique tool to optimize network monitoring and maintenance SNCF Réseau, in collaboration with Capgemini, initiated the overhaul of its supervision application. The result, called ‘New Generation Supervision’ is an innovative application in service since July 1, 2020 in the Auvergne Rhône-Alpes region. This new tool will be progressively implemented in other regions between 2021 and 2022. In the event of a hazard, the application makes it possible, for example, to communicate in real time, data relating to the maintenance operation concerned (travel times, arrival times on site, response times etc.). This data is instantly accessible to rail operators, who can then provide passengers with the best possible, most up to date information. With this unique tool, common to the four supervision centers across the country, and capable of managing alerts from various sources, it will be possible to build a vision of corrective and conditional maintenance needs on a national scale. Ultimately, all the data from human monitoring, remote monitoring and monitoring trains will be sent back to the supervision centers where it will be collated and centralized. More broadly, the aim is to establish a comprehensive information system on the state of rail infrastructure and to assist in decision-making for appropriate maintenance. The application enables SNCF Réseau agents to: Localize incidents on a dynamic map that displays infrastructure data. Identify easily the right person to contact to carry out maintenance according to the route, the time of day and the specialism concerned (electricity, mechanics etc.). Guide maintenance staff precisely to the site of the incident. They can then communicate directly with the center to share their findings and estimate their incident resolution time. Generate and manage digital intervention reports directly in the mobile application. Capgemini’s multiple expertise combined An integral part of the digital transformation program was co-constructed in agile mode between SNCF Réseau teams and Capgemini project teams. Since its launch in 2017, Capgemini team members have been designing and deploying end-to-end digital solutions that are based on its expertise in software engineering, supervision and hypervision, IoT, digital transformation, mobility, and augmented operations. The first tests of advanced processing of monitoring data on the Lyon-Marseille axis were successful thanks to the use of software that analyzes in detail the history of failures and the state of the installations in order to anticipate and carry out a conditional maintenance operation prior to the incident. “The deployment of New Generation Supervision, thanks to our partner Capgemini, will make it possible to improve not only the handling of incidents, and therefore the regularity of traffic, but also passenger information. Overall, we are going to move from very systematic maintenance to maintenance that is closer to needs, more precise and in real time – network maintenance at the right time and in the right place. It’s another step towards a high-performance network,” stated Olivier Bancel, Deputy Director General Production, SNCF Réseau. “It is an honour and a source of great pride that SNCF Réseau trusted Capgemini to help them to optimize the monitoring and maintenance of its high-performance rail network, through the ‘New Generation Supervision’ project. This project is emblematic of the Capgemini Group’s ability to apply our breadth of skills and expertise to create end-toend digital solutions for the major process of maintaining a large critical infrastructure while it is operational,” explained Olivier Emorine, Managing Director Digital Engineering & Manufacturing Services for Capgemini’s Europe Strategic Business Unit.