Patent ID: 11860043
Assignee: THE HONG KONG POLYTECHNIC UNIVERSITY
Field: Measurement (Instruments)
Classification: CPC G  A  H | IPC A  G  H

Claim 0:
1. A method for monitoring progress of a fire in an indoor environment, the indoor environment having a ceiling and a floor, the method comprising: upon detecting the fire in the indoor environment, immediately deploying a plurality of sensors to sense a body of smoke and flame risen near the ceiling for monitoring states and dynamics of the body of smoke and flame at least at an early stage of the fire, wherein the deploying of the plurality of sensors to sense the body of smoke and flame comprises: disposing the plurality of sensors on, beneath or over the floor such that an individual sensor deployed at a selected location of the floor is closer to the floor than to the ceiling and such that a sensing direction of the individual sensor is oriented vertically towards the ceiling, allowing the individual sensor to remotely sense the body of smoke and flame while avoiding the individual sensor to approach or contact the body of smoke and flame; remotely sensing, by the individual sensor, the body of smoke and flame in a vertical direction towards the ceiling to thereby generate a sequence of sensed data measured for the selected location; and transmitting, by the individual sensor, the sequence of sensed data to a computing server; receiving, by the computing server, a plurality of sensed-data sequences generated from the plurality of sensors at respective selected locations of the floor; and analyzing, by the computing server, the plurality of sensed-data sequences to determine the states and dynamics of the body of smoke and flame over the respective selected locations of the floor, thereby allowing the states and dynamics of the body of smoke and flame to be holistically monitored even at the early stage of the fire; and
further comprising: installing one or more first sensors in the indoor environment before occurrence of the fire such that an individual first sensor is held in an infrastructure sensor holder mounted to the ceiling, the one or more first sensors being included in the plurality of sensors; wherein the disposing of the plurality of sensors on, beneath or over the floor includes dropping the individual first sensor from the infrastructure sensor holder to the floor.