75% of fire calls are false alarms. Is there a startup working on this problem

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23910031

by QuantumGood • 6 years ago

7 28 6 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Is there a startup working on this problem?

greenyoda3• 6 years ago

Do you think it would be acceptable for a fire department to ignore an emergency call because some AI algorithm tells them it's 92% likely to be false? Who would be responsible if the algorithm made a mistake and people died?

sgillen2• 6 years ago

Not necessarily what OP is proposing. It could be a group if people fielding calls to the department who rapidly investigate all calls, and get the fire department there for real fires.

They could also provide some first responder care... maybe this is already what some fire departments do?

greenyoda3• 6 years ago

To investigate whether a fire call is real, wouldn't you need to be a trained firefighter? For example, you may have to enter a building that's possibly on fire to see if there's a fire. And a small fire isn't necessarily obvious by just looking at the building from the outside.

Also, if someone has to investigate before the fire department was dispatched, you'd lose a lot of valuable time, allowing the fire to spread. It could be a win if there was no fire, but a huge loss (burned buildings, dead people) if there actually was a fire.

mrfusion• 6 years ago

At my work folks always set off the alarm with the microwave. Usually popcorn. The FD said by law they have to show up and check out the building each time.

Maybe we change that law for starters.

raihansaputra• 6 years ago

Yeah I think regulation is the way. When I lived in Australia, the law and setup was this:

- The in unit smoke detectors can be triggered to warn occupants. No emergency services are called. If you have a cooking mishap or any kind of smoke, it will trigger, but just to wake the people in the unit up or annoy your neighbors.

- There are also smoke detectors in the hallway. Once this is triggered (presumably real fire), emergency services are notified and on their way. The building alarm will also sound. If it is found to be a false alarm, the tenant who triggered it is fined.

I think it's really reasonable. Small mishaps don't need to have a big response, but tenants do need to be notified. Once it's big enough (smoke in the hallway), then a response is justified.

teapot01• 6 years ago

The in unit smoke detectors can be triggered to warn occupants

This is specifically because the National Construction Code (NCC) requires multiple occupancy buildings to have certain fire safety infrastructure that generally includes a 2 hour fire separation between different occupancy units. This gives a buffer to all other occupants.

There are also smoke detectors in the hallway. If a detector is triggered in a common area this has the potential to affect the escape routes of multiple occupants so it triggers an immediate fire alarm.

Australian fire safety rules are some of the best in the world.

duxup2• 6 years ago

I wonder what the savings would be?

Is that something a given department wants to pay for even if you could reduce the numbers?

Is a false alarm very costly?

greenyoda3• 6 years ago

Is a false alarm very costly?

Potentially, yes. If fire fighters are busy responding to false alarms, they may be delayed if a real fire happens at the same time. This can result in loss of lives and property.

duxup2• 6 years ago

Is that common?

Im not sure firefighters are in a position where nobody can respond.

richardknop• 6 years ago

Solution in search of a problem. What you are suggesting is not a realistic business model and would result in another ever money losing startup.

Jtsummers• 6 years ago

Improve fire detection and reporting systems. Possibly improve in-home and in-business fire suppression systems, or even have them. I live in a fire prone area and none of the houses we looked at had fire suppression systems built-in, definitely something I'll be looking into if we have a chance to build.

But this is definitely an area where false positives are much less of a concern than false negatives. We'd rather have fire and rescue sent to non-incidents than not sent to real incidents.

gregjor4• 6 years ago

I am working on a solution. Without giving it all away, it’s an app for phones that can record audio and video and recognize a fire using ML and AI. It alerts nearby emergency responders based on GPS from the phone.

Initially this service will be ad-supported. When you launch the app you see a short video ad before the app will record the fire. With such a sharply defined demographic the ad impressions should get a good price.

krapp3• 6 years ago

So basically you're monetizing smoke detectors.

gregjor4• 6 years ago

That’s one way to think about it, but smoke detectors aren’t programmed in Rust, Typesscript, React, don’t run in a K8S cluster, aren’t serverless, so I think I have some technical advantages.

The app can either call 911 and report a fire, or you can hold it next to an Alexa/Siri/Google home hub or smart speaker, and some toaster ovens, and it will tell the connected device to call the fire department.

zzo38computer• 6 years ago

The ad is a waste of time, I think. You will have to avoid wasting time, in the case of fire. (These ads are problematic for other reasons too, but here is one situation too.)

ryanmccullagh• 6 years ago

This sounds like a solution looking for a problem.

Trias11• 6 years ago

... and then looking for someone to pay for given solution

muzani2• 6 years ago

It sounds like putting a false alarm cancel button on it would solve the problem.

d33lio• 6 years ago

I'm not surprised nobody has tackled this problem. The result of your "app" breaking is someone who needed help with a fire has their entire home / structure burn down.

I sure as hell don't want a more complicated system to tell me if my house is about to burn down or if I'm about to asphyxiate in my sleep.

The Nest smoke-detector has a horrendous number of examples of exactly this... especially people getting annoyed with false positives because it's over-complicated and then turning off the detector and dying as a result when there was later an actual fire. [0]

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/tech/columnist/baig/2018/10/0...

jacobwilliamroy• 6 years ago

God I hope no one on HN ever holds a public office. "No more task forces or comittees or councils. All government reforms will be done via startups from here on out."

75% of fire calls are false alarms. Is there a startup working on this problem

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