Cutting-Edge Fire Protection for Asian Airport
Staff -- Consulting-Specifying Engineer, 11/1/2000
Korea's Inchon International Airport is bidding to become the center of regional aviation-and a hub of both the Northern Pacific route to America and the Polar route to Europe. The facility, including its fire-alarm system, has been designed for the 21st Century.
Inchon International Airport's fire-alarm system includes a fire command center and data communication in the passenger terminal and a host of supporting buildings-some 47 buildings in all, plus utility tunnels and air-side vehicular tunnels.
Monitoring information will also be displayed at a variety of privatized buildings in the complex-the cogeneration power plant, air-cargo terminals and transportation center, to name a few.
The fire-alarm system is based on the same one used at several major international airports around the world. The entire system will incorporate microprocessor-based fire-alarm control panels, satellite panels, power supplies, transponders, fire command-center equipment, conventional and heat detectors and other alarm notification appliances, with beam detectors and spot heat detectors. Korean and Japanese products were required to meet unique specification requirements.
One interesting consideration at international airports is language. A multilingual format was required for Inchon's fire-alarm system. The control -panel displays and graphical user interfaces were provided in English and Korean convert mode, based on English/Korean conversion tables and translation modules. A larger LCD display and Korean language operator interface was provided to accommodate the Korean characters. The airport specification required all systems to communicate via its airport information communication center-the backbone local-area network incorporating a proprietary protocol. Customized versions of modules, in addition to customized bilingual versions of the graphics, satisfied the unique requirements of the specification.
For more information about fire-protection systems from Siemens, Cerberus Division, circle 106 on the Reader Service Card on page 91.
