Alarms

Do I need to tell you how annoying false alarms are? Of course not. You have no doubt been disturbed countless times by car alarms, burglary alarms, fire alarms, etc. And the false alarms are so common that you probably don't even think of the possibility that the alarm could indicate actual danger.

An alarm has no value if it sounds so often that people loose confidence in it.

The volume of the sound should be so high that everybody can hear it, but never so high that it is painful, causes panic, or prevents talking.

Surveillance staff who have nothing to do but waiting for alarms get dull and demoralized if they have nothing to do. So dull, in fact, that they fail to react promptly and adequately when an alarm finally occurs. Their job has to be organized in such a way that they have plenty of other work to do when there are no alarms, and they should participate in regular drills to rehearse what to do when an alarm occurs.

This page was last modified 2008-Dec-08