Specification For Life Safety Alarm Monitoring (Category-04):
Dubai Civil Defence has made a commitment to enhancing Life Safety and National Security in Dubai by implementing a 24x7x365 Remote Monitoring System (RMS).
RMS will detect and report alarms in real-time from Fire and Fire Fighting Systems, Lift and Gas detection systems in residential, domestic, commercial and industrial buildings.
The project includes the entire Emirate of Dubai and covers every type of buildings right from Warehouses to high rise buildings. The project will be using state of the art technology (M2M) to automatically send alarm signals in case of emergency. Information including exact details on alarm location and status will be provided to DCD for immediate response.
The buildings/sheds are divided into different categories. The specifications for Buildings/sheds falling within Category 4 are as follows:
Buildings with a gross area above 15,000 sq ft and below 200,000 sq ft with any of the following parameters are specified as Category-4
- Multiple Room Commercial Establishments
- Eight to Twenty Storey Buildings
- Industrial sheds above 15000 sq ft and below 200,000 sq. ft without hazardous material storage
Any Category-4 building may have the following alarm monitoring systems
- Addressable based Fire Alarm System with minimum floor wise zoning and open protocol connectivity as described in Section 1.4
- Fire Pumps
- Fire-Water Tank Low Level
- Lifts
- Gas Detection
Subscriber should provide a single Interface Panel for interfacing with the Dubai Civil Defence monitoring panel. The Interface Panel shall have the following capability. In the event of a single interface panel not being provided, the building category will be treated as Category 5.
- Open Protocol connectivity as described in section 1.4 from Addressable fire alarm panels in the event of Fire Alarm System not being connected to BMS.
- Open Protocol connectivity as described in section 1.4 from buildings having a BMS.
- Separate Volt free contacts (VFC) per fire alarm panel (in case of a networked fire alarm system) for the following points. The state of the VFC should ideally be Closed (NC) during normal conditions and Open (NO) during the alarm condition.
- Common Fire Alarm within the building
- Common Fire Alarm System Fault.
- Separate Volt free contacts (VFC) for the following points in the event of the points not being connected to BMS. The state of the VFC should ideally be Closed (NC) during normal conditions and Open (NO) during an alarm condition.
- One alarm point per floor/zone for fire alarm(In case of fire alarm panel not being able to provide open protocols)
- Fire-Water Tank Low Level
- Individual Lift Alarm
- Individual Lift Fault
- Individual Fire Pump Run Statu
- Individual Fire Pump Fault Status
- Gas Detection System Common Alarm
- Gas Detection System Common Fault.
- Common Alarm from specialized Fire Systems.
- Proper terminals for connectivity.
- 230VAC power supply terminals within the interface panel.
- Proper electrical earth.
- The interface panel should be located next to the proposed place of installation of the Civil Defence alarm panel.
- Containment till the Location of Civil Defence alarm panel.
BMS Requirements
Buildings having a BMS should have the provision to monitor the following points in the building:
- Fire Alarm per floor including basement
- Common Fire Alarm system Fault
- Fire-Water Tank Low Level
- Individual Lift Fault
- Individual Lift Passenger Alarms
- Individual Fire Pump Running Status
- Individual Fire Pump Trip Status
- Fire-Water Line Low-Pressure Alarm
- Gas alarm per zone or floor
- Common Gas Alarm System Fault.
- Common Alarm from specialized Fire Systems
The BMS shall integrate into the Dubai Civil Defence Alarm Panel using open protocols as defined below. The BMS shall expose all the above-mentioned points as Digital values to the Dubai Civil Defence Alarm Panel using any of the open protocols defined below:
Open protocols:
- Bacnet IP
- Bacnet MSTP
- Modbus TCP
- Modbus RTU over three wire RS485 – Proper Modbus registers to be provided for each monitoring point.
- Lonworks
Interface Panel Location
The Interface Panel should be located next to the Dubai Civil Defence Alarm Panel location. The location shall be based as per the following:
- There shall be excellent GPRS signal coverage at the location.
- The location should be on any floor on or above the ground floor.
- The location shall be within the building and not outside
- The panel shall be easily accessible
Dubai Civil Defence Panel Location
Proper space shall be provided for the Dubai Civil Defence Panel Location within the building as per the following
- A minimum space of 800mm X 800mm X 500mm shall be provided.
- Space shall be provided on the wall at least 1.5 meters above floor level
- Space shall be provided next to the Interface Panel within a maximum distance of 2 meters.
- The location shall have excellent GPRS signal coverage.
Important Information
- All Contractors/Building Owners to subscribe to the DCD counter.
- The survey will be conducted within 7 working days of the date of the subscription.
- The building category will be decided after the survey.
- The subscriber will need to rectify all snags identified during a survey within 48 hrs.
- The subscriber will make the payments at DCD cash counter.
- For multi-tenanted industrial sheds/buildings with the common fire alarm panel, the subscription charges will be borne by the owner. Tenant needs to produce the photocopy of the receipt towards payments of subscription charges, duly endorsed by the owner. The owner’s endorsement will be considered as acceptance of the owner towards the tenant’s area being covered by the centralized fire alarm system.
- Individual tenants with their own fire alarm system will pay for the subscription charges as per the determined category.
- It is mandatory that Industrial sheds with hazardous materials should have a separate panel for the area of the storage.
- Depending upon the type of material stored, multi-tenanted industrial sheds might be required to install a separate Fire alarm panel and it will be at the sole discretion of the Dubai Civil Defence.
- It is recommended that all buildings falling in category-4 and above should have an addressable fire alarm system installed covering the entire buildup area.
Note
This document is only a guideline. Depending upon the size, location, and utilities of a property, Dubai Civil Defence has the discretion of advising the systems to be installed for the safety of life and property. Accordingly, the property can consider in a Category at the sole discretion of the Dubai Civil Defence.