Most fires announce themselves long before there’s smoke.

Where conventional detection struggles.

Conventional fire detection is designed to tell you a fire has started. Thermal early warning detection is designed to tell you one is about to. The gap shows up most in open and semi-open environments — transfer stations, sorting floors, yards and covered but unenclosed spaces where smoke disperses before it reaches a detector; in dusty, high-particulate spaces where smoke detection generates so many false activations it gets isolated; in stockpiles and bulk material, where combustion begins deep inside a pile and only reaches the surface once it’s well established; in plant, electrical and mechanical spaces, where the failure mode is a component overheating and the useful warning is a rising temperature; and across large unmanned areas, where no one is present overnight to notice heat, smell or sound. In an enclosed building, the gap between heat building and a fire starting is a few minutes. In a waste facility, a stockpile or a bulk storage area, it can be the difference between an intervention and a total loss.