FIRUS and VESDA

Rick Hance

FIRUS (Fire and Utilities) is a Fermilab legacy system that has been used to monitor building fire panels and various utilities throughout Fermilab since the beginning of time. It is basically a site-wide, hi-reliability, remote monitoring system centralized beneath the cross gallery and monitored 24 hours/day, 7 days/week by the communication center staffers. It has many inputs throughout Fermilab ranging from "Analaser Trouble" to "Water Leak Detected" and everything in between including RMI's, VESDAs, Sump Pumps, etc. When something monitored by FIRUS goes abnormal, then the system displays messages on local terminals as appropriate, as well as on the Communication Center master terminal.

The VESDA, on the other hand, is a local DØ system. The term VESDA is used because all the old timers remember it that way from when VESDA made the equipment. Our equipment is now made by "ANALASER"; but the VESDA name lingers on. The correct term is "High Sensitivity Smoke Detector" (HSSD). This system has 9-zones in the DØ Experiment. It is an air sampling system based on drawing air in through sampling ports via 9 strategic piping systems and comparing the continuous air samples for obscuration. It is much more sensitive that the human olfactory system. The detectors (fan boxes with laser based obscuration sensors) are located with the plumbing in the collision hall (however zone 9 is in MCH 1). The controllers are located on top of the MCH (for serviceability), and the controller "front panels" are also remoted via a serial link and some software to the control room and the lobby. Summation alarms from the MCH rooftop controllers are fed into the FIRUS system so that Communication Center can dispatch Emergency Personnel and equipment if necessary.

There can be all sorts of FIRUS alarms that have nothing to do with VESDA. When FIRUS alarms, the thing to do is click on the message and read the info that is then presented from the database. The system documentation is essentially on-line from a user standpoint. I have maps and database listings in my office (to the extent that I reverse engineered the system when I needed to compile the info). They essentially provide me with the info needed to add new devices when necessary.

Here are photos of the screens (though the consoles have been rearranged since Heidi Schellman took these pictures.