Prototype Early Warning Fire Detection System: Test Series 1 Results

Abstract : This report documents the results of the Early Warning Fire Detection (EWFD) prototype Series I tests conducted on the ex-USS Shadwell over the period of February 7-18, 2000. Four EWFD prototypes were successfully integrated with a data acquisition system to operate in real time using a probabilistic neural network (PNN) and provided appropriate alarms in real time. Two prototypes were evaluated consisting of different sets of sensors and a PNN based on previous work in this program. EWFD prototype 2 demonstrated slightly better performance than EWFD prototype I and faster response times than the Simplex COTS smoke detection system. Even EWFD prototype 1 demonstrated on average faster response times than the Simplex detectors.