Wish you were there? | Archive Titles

Year	F/A reduction	% reduction
1996	145,848	12.27
1997	66,293	6.30
1998	75,478	7.42
1999	36,798	4.05
Total	324,417	30.34
Fig 1. The UK reduction of false alarms passed to the police “represents many hours of police time which have been redirected to other incidents and improving responses”, says ACPO.

	UK	Ger	Fra	Bel	Swe
No. of ARCs	70	350	200	11	39
Total installed systems (1000’s)	2500	1000	2000	500	300
Total monitored systems (1,000’s)	850	279	1000	80	190
Verification used (%):
Audio	10	–	27	10	2
Call in	85	–	10	69	35
Visual	5	–	3	1	1
A/B	–	–	4	–	16
Cancelled calls to police	75	–	–	60	5
Type of alarm (%):
Genuine	27	–	30	30	16
User Error	52	–	67	65	66
Technical	18	–	1	3	9
Fig 2. This summary of findings clearly shows there are problems with false alarms throughout Europe. Many countries employ verification techniques. Most still favour “call in” contact with the user to determine the cause. The largest proportion of false calls is down to user error and verification will not significantly improve this. Says the BSIA: “Clearly then, there are two areas that need to be addressed: product design and the user”.
* There are no comparable figures available for Italy. * In ‘Verification Used’ and ‘Type of alarm’ categories the answer ‘other’ makes up the percentage .