Integrating Fire Safety and Security Solutions in the Campus Environment
Navigating the line between fire safety and security to create a safer learning environment
- By April Musser, PE, CFPS, MBA
- June 01, 2019
Integration of security and fire alarms
in facility design and emergency
response planning is vitally important
in today’s threat environment. In the
Parkland high school shooting, a fire
alarm was activated during the attack (it is
not known if the fire alarm was activated by
the shooter or was automatically triggered by
smoke from the firearm used in the attack)
and briefly funneled students and teachers
toward the danger before they became aware
of the security threat. As a result, questions
have been raised about how we can ensure
that our fire protection systems, such as fire
alarms, are not used for malicious intent.
When the fire alarm activated, those
unaware of the danger began the required
emergency evacuation procedure which was
drilled regularly throughout the school year.
Shortly thereafter, the principal issued a
Code Red (the school’s code for an active
shooter), but those already in the process of
evacuating in response to the fire alarm
found themselves stranded in hallways, as
teachers began locking down classrooms. In
the confusion, some students made the decision
to flea for their lives instead of sheltering
in the locked classrooms they’d already
evacuated. The fact is that the creators of the
Code Red drills had likely not anticipated a
fire alarm evacuation occurring during an
active shooter scenario.
Historically, fire and life safety features
and security features tended to be at odds in
facility design and emergency response planning.
Huge efforts have been undertaken to
dictate how facility fire alarm and life safety
features should operate in the presence of
physical security controls in order to ensure
occupant life safety for egress. However,
these efforts focused primarily on ensuring
security controls didn’t block egress or hamper
fire response.
In today’s environment, the threats are
changing, and integration of security and
fire/life safety features must go far deeper
than relays to release door locks and permit
egress. In today’s world of active shooters
and terrorist threats, the integration between
security and fire/life safety has to begin at
facility concept design, and extend through
the life of the facility, to incident response
and pre-planning at all phases of facility lifecycle.
In this article, we will seek to identify
the conflicts and opportunities that exist to
integrate security and fire and life safety
planning, as well as the conflicts that we
must overcome. And, we will lay out a stepby-
step strategy to accomplish these goals
within the campus environment.
Parkland is a prime example of why preplanning
cannot presume that fire and security
threats will happen independently of one
another and offers a terrifying real life view
of how emergency response planning must
be inclusive of both. The fact is that fire safety
and security share one common objective:
to keep people, property, and assets safe and
secure. However, there is a growing potential
for code compliance conflict between these
two critical disciplines. This conflict grows
from the fundamentally different approach
each takes to this common objective. Among
these differences is the codification of design,
construction and maintenance standards for
fire safety. Alternately, security design, construction,
and maintenance is largely unregulated
and are generally not enforceable by
authorities having jurisdiction. In an attempt
to overcome this challenge, the National Fire
Protection Association (NFPA) has undertaken
the development of a new standard,
NFPA 3000, Standard for an Active Shooter/
Hostile Event Response Program. The goal of
this provisional standard is to establish a
unified planning, response, and recovery
program for shooter/hostile events to reduce
confusion and make better use of resources
to save time and ultimately to save lives.
Another fundamental difference between
security planning and fire and life safety
planning is that security planning is based in
behavioral sciences, while fire and life safety
are based in physical sciences. Security planning
seeks to detect, deter, assess, delay, and
limit damage through operational, architectural,
and technical design elements. Fire
safety seeks to control the fire through active
and passive systems, such as sprinklers and
compartmentation, with the goal of allowing
occupants adequate egress time before an
environment becomes untenable. Secondary
and tertiary goals are to limit damage to
buildings and assets and to provide protection
for first responders. However, despite
the differences, fire safety approaches and
security approaches often utilize the same
types of systems to suppress, compartmentalize,
and support response operations, so
there is crossover that often goes unexploited
in the facility planning phase.
One of the most powerful opportunities to
maximize this crossover is through campuswide
notification. Many campus environments
have been slow to upgrade older
emergency reporting systems making them
fully compatible with campus notification,
forgoing both the benefit for potential fire
and life safety, as well as for security and
threat response. One of the most important
aspects of fire or threat response is communication with the occupants, so they understand what they need to do, so as to not hamper emergency response, and to ensure that they
don’t put themselves in harm’s way.
Similarly, security and life safety systems often both use notification
devices of different types to alert occupants to an emergency.
Options such as dynamic egress signage that can direct occupants
away from a threat from fire or security issue is one such option to
marry the notification requirements of both systems in order to
maximize the congruity for the maximum protection benefit. Both
may also utilize similar, or even identical, technologies in order to
detect threats.
While there is not a spot type threat detector similar to a smoke
detector available (at least not to my knowledge), video detection is
commonly used to detect security threats, and can also be used for
fire detection. While this technology may be cost-prohibitive, for certain
occupancies it can offer benefits, and when utilized for both
security and fire alarm it may be more financially feasible. However,
this kind of planning is best incorporated at the design phase to
ensure there are no redundancies that drive up costs.
However, there are ample challenges to overcome as well. For
example, security often focuses on deterring access, not just with
locked doors, but even traffic access via perimeter security such as
gates and bollards which may also slow down emergency response.
Even considerations such as crowd control during special events, and
temporary traffic and parking patterns for occupancy surges (for
events such as graduations or athletic events), can impact both security
and fire safety response.
To satisfactorily integrate a complete emergency response plan
that incorporates both security and fire safety, it is vital to begin as
early in the facility lifecycle as feasible. A step-by-step approach can
help to guide decisions and identify opportunities in order to maximize
crossover technologies, reduce costs and develop workable solutions
to overcome conflicts. This step-by-step approach is as follows:
Define threats. What could happen, when and where could it
happen?
Investigate infrastructure. What fire and life safety systems do
you have in place or are required to be in place (for new facilities),
what communication systems are provided or planned, and how do
these systems interact?
Planning. The planning must include:
- Life safety plan including fire alarm, evacuation, suppression,
monitoring systems and alerting systems as well as emergency
responder plans.
- Security plan including campus-wide security, surveillance, and
control systems.
- Communication plan including voice, text, and graphical messages
and their delivery method(s).
- Emergency response action plan to define what you want occupants,
traffic, and emergency responders to do for each possible
scenario.
Implementation. Includes a phased plan with budges, specifications,
timelines, training, and gaining necessary approvals.
Operational Readiness. Periodic reviews because your campus
and risks will continue to change
Periodic Testing. Campuses must test their fire and security drills
regularly and with changes in how they operate to keep those in the
drill on their toes.
In the future, we expect that there will be some degree of codification
of security requirements, as the code writing bodies begin to
fully grasp the vital importance of integration of fire and security
systems and emergency response. In addition, as technologies for
both advance, there will be future technologies to continue capitalizing
on integration of the two features. Similarly, future trends are
likely to begin integrating security and fire safety emergency response
and oversight duties as the two fields continue to converge.
One emerging technology is the Physical Security Information
Management (PSIM) Software which provides a platform and applications
created by middleware developers to integrate multiple
unconnected security system applications and devices and control
through a single comprehensive user interface. We predict the future
of this technology will cross over to include fire protection systems,
such as alarm and mass notification, as well.
While growth will continue to erase the conflicts between security
and fire safety design and planning, the important takeaway is that we
begin now. Parkland was just one example of how security and fire
safety can be at odds with each other in a real, life-threatening situation.
Failure to develop a plan for integration of these two vitally
important systems opens the door for intolerable risks. While conflicts
still exist, they are surmountable with proper planning and early
planning is always preferable. After all, the old saying about an ounce
of prevention being worth a pound of cure still holds true.
This article originally appeared in the May/June 2019 issue of Campus Security Today.