Prisons achieve fire code compliance with alarm, saving time and money. (News Briefs).

ALARM 2.0 is a software tool designed to help prison facility managers and fire safety engineers achieve cost-effective compliance with the widely-used Life Safety Code of the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA). Correctional facilities can use compliance with the Life Safety Code to receive accreditation from the American Correctional Association (ACA). ALARM, developed in NIST's Office of Applied Economics with the support of NIST's Office of Law Enforcement Standards, implements a goal-oriented or performance-based approach to achieving code compliance. This approach provides multiple alternatives to choose from when deciding how to achieve compliance by assigning varying weights to 13 safety features. By taking advantage of these alternative solutions, a user can compute the least-cost means of compliance to achieve significant savings compared with the rigid prescriptive solution.

Once the user specifies the current safety levels for the facility, the software designates potential safety improvements available to achieve compliance with the code. The user then enters dimensional data to find the least-cost combination of improvements and its estimated construction cost. The software generates a report detailing safety improvements to be made, broken down into tasks with cost estimates for each. A comprehensive manual and help system are included to answer questions about the software and the NFPA code. A tutorial explains all facets of ALARM and guides the user through the program.

ALARM 2.0 is based on earlier work in the Office of Applied Economics which was applied in the evaluation of 89 hospitals. An average of 41 percent savings was achieved compared with prescriptive solutions. ALARM is currently being distributed by the NFPA and the ACA.

CONTACT: Laura Schultz, [phone]; [e-mail].