Evacuation systems in general

Mainly the application of evacuation systems in relation to a fire alarm system will be considered.  But, the applicable standards and guidelines for fire alarm systems can also be used for other applications. The requirements which matters for electronic power supplies are also applicable in other disciplines. Even the requirements for speaker are ready to use in other applications. An exception are the so-called EP requirements (explosion proof).

‘In short, al lot is useful so do not feel the need of requirements to be re-developed’

It might be good to see how evacuation systems arose in the Netherlands.

As long as there are fire alarm systems, evacuation systems exist. In the first application that were sirens, so-called slow whoops which called the present audience to evacuate. This was perfectly useable.

However, because of the many fire alarm systems that arose over the years it became clear that a siren was no longer useful. People simply did not know what a siren meant and the impact was practically null. Even nowadays to often a siren is not taken seriously, so nothing happens. It was important to increase the attention value.

‘This was done by the introduction of voice systems’

Taxametercentrale Amsterdam already introduced the system Auto Call on the Dutch market in 1978. This made it possible to evacuate a building zone-wise with spoken texts. These were revolutionary systems at the time and these systems received much more attention, particular by fire stations. Finally it was possible to apply an full-automatic evacuation system. From that moment it became necessary to classify these installations.

Only a short time later these installation were called type A or type B installations.