An IoT-based Fire Safety Management System for Educational Buildings: A Case Study

Safety is a serious concern that should be addressed carefully in different locations including homes, workplaces and educational buildings. The risk of fire is the most significant threat in many educational facilities such as schools, universities, offices, etc. The main goal of this work is developing an effective system that allows early managing of fires to avoid material and human losses. With the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT), the implementation of such system became possible. A low-cost system incorporating IoT sensors is constructed in this study to collect data (heat, the number of people at the fire scene, ...) in real time. The system provides a control panel that displays readings from all sensors on a single web page. When the collected values exceed a particular threshold, the system sends a message to the building keeper's phone, allowing him to notify the authorities or dispatch firemen in real time. One of the system's most important characteristics is that it keeps track of how many people are at the fire scene, simplifying the evacuation process and allowing civil defense authorities to efficiently manage resources. The system has been successfully tested in a variety of circumstances in an educational building (Al-Faisaliah female campus, University of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia).