The fire safety industry is rather homogenous, even though requirements vary from country to country due to regional/national legislation. The security industry, on the other hand, is a highly fragmented one, with few “big” vendors and many small and niche vendors; however, that is starting to change and consolidate. In building automation, customers are asking for optimized energy efficiency and sustainability solutions. Overall, demand is driven by the increasing threat of crime and terrorism, as well as more and more urban agglomerations.
The fire safety industry is rather homogenous, even though requirements vary from country to country due to regional/national legislation. The security industry, on the other hand, is a highly fragmented one, with few “big” vendors and many small and niche vendors; however, that is starting to change and consolidate. In building automation, customers are asking for optimized energy efficiency and sustainability solutions. Overall, demand is driven by the increasing threat of crime and terrorism, as well as more and more urban agglomerations.
Twenty years from now, approximately 60 percent of the world's population will live in cities. The need for public safety and security to protect people, assets and infrastructures will increase dramatically because wherever many people live and work within a small area, security as well as comfort is crucial. Cities that are not able to provide a safe and secure environment are less attractive for people and companies to settle down.
With this big picture in mind, Siemens Building Technologies looks into some factors that will be shaping and driving the security and safety industries in the next few years.
Systems Integration
The traditional divide between security, safety and building automation systems is blurring. Customers are asking for complete, integrated emergency and building automation solutions, as well as value-added services, encompassing electric installation, heating, ventilation, climate control, lighting, access control, video surveillance, alarm systems, fire detection and evacuation.
Convergence
Convergence in buildings is being pushed further, with IT-based and IP-based solutions driving physical security closer to the IT industry. There are increased needs to use existing IT infrastructure in medium-to-large installations, running business and security systems in parallel.
Wireless
As wireless communication technology matures, it will be used alongside wired communication infrastructure in order to optimize installations in specific security and safety environments. A good example is renovation jobs and refurbishing at locations where it is difficult to install wiring like in historical buildings or museums.
Data Leveraging
Data collected in different IT systems is being used for improving security solutions. For instance, access control data could support safe evacuation in an emergency. This increases the need for handling of and analyzing large amounts of data. A good example is video analytics: it is possible to define an object in a video surveillance sequence and then automatically search for all sequences when the object was moved, such as a car in a parking lot.
Corporate Security
Today's corporate security officers are not only faced with threats that are diverse and interconnected, but must also contend with an evolving business environment. Protective measures can no longer be just site-specific or even country-specific, but must take on a comprehensive approach. Such corporate security solutions range from single- to multisite scenarios and allow for complete situational awareness of sites, including remote operation, as both central and local management stations can deploy safety and security standards and processes across the entire organization.
Intelligence
Intelligent response systems and solutions allow for intelligent and dynamic handling of and reaction to incidents, such as integration of fire safety with voice alarm, mass notification, evacuation, fire extinguishing, emergency lighting and building automation on one platform. Demand for intelligent evacuations is driven by buildings that are getting higher in urban areas, or large sports venues and campuses. Siemens recently presented prototype evacuation simulation software that is used to optimize escape routes in buildings and stadiums. The software could also be used in future building automation and intelligent response systems in order to directly influence evacuations.
TCO
Under today's economic conditions, the total cost of ownership (TCO) of safety, security and building automation solutions over the entire life cycle is getting more scrutiny. Optimizing the TCO does not only mean consolidating all systems into one, making the access and operations far more efficient; it also means providing flexibility to adapt to rapid changes, like opening or closing of branch offices, moving production facilities and similar organizational adaptations.
Hosted/Managed Services
As corporations focus more on their core competencies, security and building automation in the forms of hosted and managed services and comprehensive risk management are outsourced. Cost pressure and efficiency targets, in markets such as large corporations, chemical and pharmaceutical companies, airports and power utilities, are creating greater demand for innovative security services. This is expected to drive remote management and servicing of security and safety systems. Remotely commanding security operations and services can bring to the end user cost reduction, increased protection of manned and unmanned locations, and more efficient management of multiple remote locations from a central control room.
Energy Monitoring
Energy performance monitoring means constantly checking installed building automation systems. Reports are then generated with the ultimate goal of optimizing and fine-tuning the performance of the installed systems. In some regions, this is already part of law facing building owners and operators, who have to monitor the energy consumption of the building and over time come up with optimization measures to reduce the amount of energy used for their building.
Vertical Solutions
Customers are asking for more customized solutions for individual industries and vertical markets, such as airports and data centers. A data center-specific solution, for example, helps the center be run 24/7. The offer comprises, among other modules, aspiring smoke detectors to detect smoldering fires, which are typical for data centers because of their cabling; conventional fire detectors would take too long to react to smoldering fires. For the extinguishing part, Siemens has developed technology to prevent possible damage to hard-disk drives with gas-extinguishing systems.