Born to Engineer star Yusuf Muhammad – co-founder and Design Director of Plumis – has spoken to IFSEC global about how fire suppression systems could be implemented to protect the vulnerable.
While there has been a big reduction in fire fatalities in the UK in the last 30 years there remains a big fire safety challenge with an ageing population and increasing prevalence of dementia.
Yusuf is using engineering to find new ways to protect vulnerable residents.
He sees fire safety technology needs to be a key part of a combined solution and his company is now set to use a Smart Grant of £349,526 from Innovate UK to Automist – a system that uses infrared temperature sensors to provide environmental monitoring that can link to smart thermostat functionality.
The new system features multiple detectors and spray heads to protect fire prone hot spots and – importantly – connects to the normal domestic water supply making it easy to retrofit.
Yusuf aim is to offer housing providers a better understanding of any potential risk where residents vulnerability has changed, enabling them to intervene and mitigate the risk of fire.
In February last year Yusuf, and the team at Plumis, started work to retrofit Automist system in 11 sheltered housing schemes in London. Since installing the system it has been activated twice – once when a person fell asleep with a lit cigarette and again with a kitchen hob fire. In both cases, the system alerted the residents who were able to put out the fire!
However, if the residents had not been able to put out the fire, the system was ready to take over and target the fire with a dense fog of water mist.
