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DESIGN AND CONSTRUCTION OF A GSM/SMS BASED FIRE ALARM SYSTEM

Dept: ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING File: Word(doc) Chapters: 1-5 Views:

Abstract

A fire alarm system is used primarily to evacuate the premises in the event or occurrence of a fire condition and then secondarily to report the fire to the proper authorities, in this paper basically a low cost fire detection and control system based on smoke and heat detection is proposed. The use of wireless automation in almost all the field of power, gas, agriculture and security systems has over the years provided novel solutions to remote operations, in the paper the implementation of a SMS based communication system is incorporated to a smoke detection system in the case of a fire. The implemented design is cheap and effective. The SMS sending feature included in the design increases the reliability of the system. The design has been developed since the social and economic cost of natural disasters which has increased in recent years due to population growth, change in land use patterns, migration and unplanned urbanization, environmental degradation and global climate change

CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

1.0 BACKGROUND INFORMATION OF THE STUDY

Today, humanity can be classified as living in a “machine society” where technological tools are predominantly at different levels, interfacing in the day–to-day activity of man. These livelihood activities constitute and deliver economic, social and political benefits and potential risks to the survivability of nations –especially developing nations like ours.

Due to the fast development in telecommunication technologies, it is believed that wireless communication is a good practice for remote sensing and automation in industrial and residential locations. Nigeria, like any developing country, is witnessing an era of rapid economic and social development. This development brings with it, new technologies, new materials, power sources and telecommunication equipment. Modern industries are springing up housing volatile materials and highly sophisticated equipment that increase the menace of fire. Concern for safety of lives and properties calls for an efficient and dependable fire protection system. This has enhanced the application of new technologies in the fire field. Sensors are able to consider certain dynamic and static variables such as humidity, the type of fuel, slope of the land, the direction and the speed of the wind, smoke , to mention a few.

The reports of most of the panel of enquiries on fire accidents in Nigeria, oral interview of some fire experts and personal experience confirmed the fact that electrical fault is a major source of fire accident. Hence, realization that a fire protection system capable of automatically switching off electrical power supply to the affected area in addition to the traditional role of raising an alarm and triggering a sprinkler or other automatic fire lighting system is going to be more efficient than the existing systems which leaves that important role unaddressed. Now a day’s automatic fire detection and control is becoming very essential to reduce the fire in the building and industry. Automatic fire alarm system provides real-time surveillance, monitoring and automatic alarm. A key aspect of fire protection is to identify a developing fire emergency in a timely manner, and to alert the building’s occupants and fire emergency organizations. This is the role of fire detection and alarm systems. Generally fire detectors are designed to respond at an early stage to one more of the four major characteristics of combustion, heat, smoke, flame or gas. No single type of detector is suitable for all types of premises or fires. Heat detectors respond to the temperature rise associated with a fire and smoke detector respond to the smoke or gas generated due to fire.

Thus, proposed in this paper is the design and implementation of a fire alarm system with SMS notification, this idea is economically efficient as well because the system proposed is intelligent and reduces human intervention and labour extensively and execution can be gotten at a very low cost providing extensive environmental, property and life safety.

1.1 STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

The Nigerian environment is considered to be hazards prone brought about by man-made and natural disasters due to its geographic circumstance which is exposed to catastrophic, floods droughts and fires. Based on the reports; devastations of these natural hazards and disasters including fires have increased in recent years. Our lifestyle of negligence and adapting to emerging technological solutions puts us at the risk of loss to fire and related occurrences as seen in markets, homes and other public places. The risk of fire occurrence is high especially during the dry season, Christmas and New Year celebration due to firecrackers. In the case where house fires are prevalent, it has effect to derail the economic growth, destroy social and physical capital including infrastructures, which resort to reallocation of ongoing programs to finance relief operations to fatalities and inhabitants and reconstruction efforts which diverts funds to social services. Fires are considered natural and manmade hazards. In fire prevention and fire suppression; it requires the adoption of uniform fire safety standards, the incorporation of fire safety, construction and provision of protective and safety devices in buildings and structures.

• OBJECTIVE

The basic objective of this system is to utilize the available and cheap method of the remote and automation process of the GSM network and sensing system to collect real-time status of the environment and make measurements to prompt a remote response in case of a fire incident.

 

1.3 SCOPE OF THE STUDY

The scope of this project is to design and construct fire alarm system interfaced with a microcontroller unit and GSM module with the wireless communication features over SMS. Within the scope of this project, the prototype model is equipped with a dedicated SIM (Subscriber Identification Module). Minimal power consumption can be achieved for the operations. The limitation of this project is that the system would not be able to perform communication get the real status of the location when there is no network coverage.