New IoT-Based Technology Combats Fire Hazards in Shopping Centers in India
Desk Correspondent, abptakmaa, Kolkata, 24th Dec 2019 : Signa Guard ( www.signaguard.com ), a division of U.S. headquartered MachineSense, LLC. ( www.machinesense.com ) recently announced the successful completion of several pilot projects in India involving the use of sensor-based advanced IoT technology for preventing fire in crowded public spaces, notably shopping malls, which have been the sites of frequent fires in recent history. Shopping centers in India are extremely vulnerable to catching fire, primarily due to mismanaged electrical wiring & distribution, which very often carry excessive currents, igniting wiring and ultimately triggering fires.
SignaGuard is at the forefront of developing IoT technology for public safety and has pioneered a system that will allow managers of public facilities, who often lack highly skilledelectrical engineers, to have real-time insights into the status and health of their power lines and ultimately allow them to detect and prevent further devastation.
One recently completed pilot project was at Nandram Market – eastern India’s largest wholesale market located in Kolkata. The market was ravaged by a massive fire in 2008 and again in July 2019. Fire prevention has, therefore, been a top priority for Deepak Sethia, the owner of Nandram market. “When MachineSense approached us, we immediately involved them in investigating the power safety issue. I am highly satisfied with the end result following their discovery which has made our shopping center safer from unwarranted fire breakouts”, said Mr. Sethia.
The system, a combination of sensors and software, is developed by SignaGuard and hosted in collaboration with Microsoft Azure IoT Central cloud platform. “With over 100 installations in 50 cities spread over 5 countries, SignaGuard from MachineSense is poised to become the solution of choice for IoT-based fire safety,” said Conrad Bessemer, the Chairman of MachineSense.
Bert Van Hoof, Partner & Group Program Manager, Azure IoT at Microsoft Corp. said, “By Building on Microsoft Azure IoT Central, MachineSense is able to reduce the growing overhead of managing their IaaS-based IoT services, which today require an investment of more than ten dedicated engineers, 3 dedicated cloud clusters and over 70 servers for production deployment. Azure IoT Central provides the fully managed application platform that MachineSense needs to easily and reliably scale their business to other buildings throughout the U.S., India, and beyond.”
The successful completion of the pilot projects in India are of immense significance for public safety. Due to the lack of regulation enforcement, catastrophic fires in public buildings are steadily on the rise in India. In light of this, MachineSense had sought out to improve the fire safety of public buildings in India, beginning with the sixteen local markets that had faced devastating fires over the last few years.
“Fire from poor electrical conditions is one of the main public safety challenges in India. We have deployed our Power Analyzers in many of the shopping centers and hospitals and found huge safety issues in all of them. In addition to wasting 10-20% electrical energy via unwanted harmonics, almost all of them are at risk of catching fire via neutral due to huge imbalance in current lines.” said Dr. Biplab Pal, CEO & Co-Founder of MachineSense. Publicity : Candid Communication.
