Patent ID: 8253574

Claim:
A method of predicting smoke propagation comprising: establishing a plurality of ambient condition detectors in a region, assigning each detector a node; establishing select reference smoke flow paths between selected pairs of detectors based on their physical location and structural environment, wherein the step of establishing select reference smoke flow paths includes selecting pairs of nodes wherein smoke can travel from one node of said pair to the other node of said pair without passing any other nodes and with regard to their physical location and structural environment, assigning to each pair of selected nodes one edge if smoke propagation between said pair is unidirectional and two edges if smoke propagation between said pair is bidirectional, estimating smoke propagation time along each edge based on the physical location and structural environment; establishing a database of at least detector specific information and related reference smoke flow paths between detectors and related time based smoke flow values or a predetermined method to calculate related time based flow values between detectors, wherein establishing the database includes storing for each edge, start node identification, end node identification and estimated smoke propagation time along the edge; sensing a developing ambient condition at a respective detector and, in real-time, retrieving the detector specific information and reference smoke flow paths associated with the respective detector; establishing, in real-time, at least one time based smoke flow value for at least one reference smoke flow path for the respective detector; establishing a plurality of predictive smoke detector to smoke detector propagation paths, combined from multiple predictions of smoke detector to smoke detector smoke flow paths and times originated from two or more activated detectors based on the established reference smoke flow paths, wherein the predictive smoke detector to smoke detector propagation paths are established between each of the two or more activated detectors and all adjacent nodes in which possible paths are likely to occur; and outputting at least smoke path information of the two or more activated detectors and adjacent nodes and respective time based smoke flow values based on said predictive smoke detector to smoke detector propagation paths.