Latin America Data Center Fire Detection and Suppression Market - Industry Outlook & Forecast 2022-2027

MARKET INSIGHTS 

The Latin America data center fire detection and suppression market is expected to grow at a CAGR of over 7% from 2022 to 2027 and is expected to cross USD 1 billion by 2027 from USD 1 billion in 2021. The increase in the cost of data center outages has driven the importance of properly functioning fire detection & suppression systems in data centers. It is because flames and smoke can cause irreversible damage to infrastructure and lead to the facility's shutdown. Therefore, to protect the data center facility from such hazardous situations, installing fire and smoke detection systems helps to detect smoke or flame in its initial stage and trigger the fire alarm system. Fire detection and suppression systems are designed and installed in data centers to combat a fire breakout across the facility data floor areas, technical spaces, and support plants. Recently, fire-related incidents have resulted in data center outages leading to downtime, which has led to increased investments in these systems in data centers.

The adoption of gas-based suppression systems is witnessing traction—the fire suppression market to gain more share than detection systems during the forecast period. Operators are focusing on avoiding damage to the IT equipment and are adopting water-less fire suppression systems. Air-aspirating or air sampling are gaining popularity due to their early-stage fire detection nature.

KEY HIGHLIGHTS

• Chile's data center fire suppression and detection market are projected to witness an absolute growth of 133%.
• Countries such as Brazil and Mexico will be significant areas of opportunity for vendors supplying fire detection and suppression equipment, such as SEVO Systems, Securiton, The Chemours Company, and others.
• Using inert gas or clean agent suppression systems, data center operators increasingly adopt gas-based fire suppression systems in server rooms. For instance, Equinix MO1 Monterrey IBX Data Center uses FM200 gas suppression agents and portable fire extinguishers.
• Industry standards under the National Fire Protection Association (NFPA 10, NFPA 25, and NFPA 75) set data center fire detection and suppression guidelines. For instance, the NFPA 25 standard is used for inspecting, testing, and maintaining the fire suppression system using water as a fire extinguishant.

KEY TRENDS

Rising Popularity of Gaseous Fire Suppression Systems

• The fires in data centers can cause massive catastrophes, and data loss can lead to life-threatening changes. Therefore, high marginal systems are preferred by data center operators.
• Recently, fire protection systems have evolved, including the norms and regulations associated with fire.
• The data center operators are adopting alternative fire suppression systems to reduce the damage caused by any leakage in the suppression system.

Adoption of innovative fire suppression and fire detection systems will drive the market.

• The water consumption in the data center will be reduced now as natural gas and hydrogen fuel cell-based systems are entering the market, which will aid in increasing efficiency hence making the data center more sustainable.
• The fire and safety industry has also witnessed innovations in fire alarm systems. In September 2021, Edwards introduced Ceiling Mount Speakers, and Speaker-Strobes Genesis LED GCS Series.
• Marioff is offering HI-FOG, a water mist suppression system, as it consumes much less water than the sprinkler systems used traditionally. The water stored is highly compressed with built-in pressure and then is released using sprinklers and spray heads.

AI is used in conjunction with standard fire alarm systems in data centers.

• AIoT technology is being used to enhance fire safety, which integrates predictive insights with solutions from a plethora of autonomy from real-time monitoring and historical data.
• VISD (Flame and Smoke Video Image Detection) is a system that uses algorithms on video-based analytics to detect smoke and flames from a fire.
• The reliability of VESDA (Very Early Smoke Detection Apparatus) and pinpoint addressability of early warning smoke detection are combined in a series detector such as Fire Sense VESDA-E VEA are being adopted which proves to be more advantageous than traditional smoke detectors.

SEGMENTAL ANALYSIS

The data center fire suppression market is dominating, contributing over 60% to the market share, followed by the Latin America data center fire detection market.

The primary fire suppression systems used in data centers typically consist of wet pipe sprinklers, pre-action sprinklers, special fire suppression agents such as clean agent fire extinguishants, inert gases like nitrogen or argon, or high-pressure water mist fire suppression systems. Data center operators prefer water mist fire suppression systems as an alternative water-based fire suppression system. The water mist fire suppression systems use high-pressure water, which produces very fine water droplets. Most of these water droplets are of diameters less than 1,000 microns. NFPA has also developed standards for water mist fire protection, namely, NFPA 750, which defines design, manufacturing, and implementation guidelines.

The most commonly adopted smoke detection strategy by data center operators is spot-type smoke detection, as it is simple and inexpensive in nature. The selection of a smoke detection strategy also depends on the design and needs of the data center facility. New types of intelligent detection technology use built-in algorithms with multiple sensors to minimize the likelihood of false alarms. This type of detector depends on multiple analog sensors such as smoke, heat, and carbon monoxide sensing devices, which transmit the information processed by algorithms. Intelligent detectors are becoming more popular due to lower false alarm chances. Data center operators prefer cross-zone detection when adopting a spot smoke detection system. Cross-zone detection depends on activating two alarms before subsequent action, such as opening a pre-action valve or clean agent discharge.

In terms of deployment location, technical spaces/room-level fire protection contribute a significant share of over 65%, followed by other spaces/building-level fire protection.

The countries with growing cloud regions are more likely to boost the fire sprinklers market and passive fire protection systems during the forecast period.

VENDOR ANALYSIS

• Latin America Data center operators and data center fire detection and suppression market vendors collaborate to provide innovative, trustworthy fire safety solutions. Vendors are competing in terms of making fault-tolerant and accurate.
• Fire safety systems vendors are offering tailoring products and innovative solutions based on various types of larger data halls, spaces, or facilities dealing with workloads with high computing performance.