Honeywell announced it has joined with a group of leading manufacturers and third-party central stations to help deliver more detailed contextual information about commercial fire emergencies to first responders. 

Honeywell’s open and secure fire service platform allows each authorized partner to contribute information they have regarding the emergency (e.g., type and location of incident), as well as, building information (e.g., hazards or on site contact personnel) and share that information via mobile apps directly with the first responders dispatched to the incident. 

Honeywell, Telguard, NAPCO Security Technologies and Resideo fire communicators — which connect fire panels to the monitoring station and monitoring station partners, Emergency24 and Rapid Response Monitoring, which receive emergency event data and then manually communicate that data to emergency communications centers — will now digitally send a copy of the alarm data to the Honeywell platform. 

Fire fighter mobile app providers, IamResponding, Active911 and Honeywell’s US Digital Designs, which first responders use to manage their incoming dispatches, will pull the data from the platform to deliver the critical emergency information to the apps when dispatched. 

In a fire emergency response, fire fighters are typically only given a simple building address before they arrive on site. By sharing data from either the fire communicator radio at the building or from a monitoring station, this group will provide first responders with access to important incident location and contact information — which could include a detailed map and other critical visual information — helping to increase their speed, accuracy and improve how they address the event when they arrive on site. 

Together, the group of partners can help provide important incident data from commercial buildings to nearly one million first responders in the United States. This arms about 80 percent of U.S. firefighters with better information should they be dispatched to one of these buildings, according to the announcement. 

“Time is critical when responding to an emergency situation,” said Sameer Agrawal, vice president and general manager, Commercial Fire Americas, Honeywell Building Technologies. “We are continuously looking at how we can leverage the latest technologies to help improve the time it takes for first responders to arrive at an emergency, and how we can equip them with more accurate and robust information. With that in mind, we continuously study and analyze every step of the emergency communications path to help first responders stay safer, while also helping to minimize property damage and save more lives.” 

To learn more about why enabling a technology-connected alarm journey is critical to reducing emergency response times, go here.