Resilience: How NFPA's Call to Action Aligns with Smarter Fire Monitoring Infrastructure

Resilience may seem like a vague concept at first glance - just something to do with recovery or sustainability. But for those of us in fire protection and life safety, it's far more specific.

Resilience means continuity. It means infrastructure that keeps working when disaster hits. And more than anything else, it means that you prepare yourself before things go wrong.

That's the central message of Birgitte Messerschmidt's recent NFPA article, Resilience Revisited. In her article, she highlights how resilience has evolved since events like Hurricane Katrina and Sandy, and what it should mean today - particularly in our built environment. For those of us working in fire safety, her article serves as both a challenge and a guide.

To extract important learning here, let's break down the article. We'll show how its most important takeaways relate directly to building fire systems. More importantly, we'll show how facilities can use tools like remote monitoring systems to meet the goals of resilient infrastructure.

Build More Than Response - Designing for Recovery

Modern fire protection can't end with just detection or evacuation. Resilience demands that we think further ahead to the recovery phase. That begins with how we build and monitor our systems:

"Broadly, resilience can be defined as the ability to prepare and plan for, absorb, recover from, and adapt to adverse events."

Messerschmidt's definition highlights something true: resilience isn't a single moment of action. It's a continuous strategy. Preparation, absorption, and adaptation all require systems that don't just operate correctly under ideal conditions, but stay functional when things go sideways. Those are exactly the crisis scenarios where you need your alarm system to just plain work.

Fire monitoring infrastructure plays a big role in this strategy. A head-end device does more than just send alarms. It documents history, supervises circuits, tracks trouble signals, and enables remote alerts.

This type of "operational depth" is what allows facility teams to recover faster, investigate incidents accurately, and adjust policies to reduce risk going forward.

It's easy to build a fire plan around life safety codes. But a truly resilient facility plans for what happens after - when the flames are out and operations need to resume. Monitoring history, trouble resolution logs, and response timelines become tools for rebuilding better, not just passing inspections.

Fire Safety as a LEED Credit: A Telling Shift

A powerful illustration of resilience's new role came during the 2024 Greenbuild conference, as Messerschmidt describes.

"For the first time, wildfire resilience is being considered as a potential credit toward LEED (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification."

The fact that fire resilience is now being considered as part of environmental design standards is a major milestone. Traditionally, LEED focused on sustainability - energy efficiency, materials use, and emissions.

Now, resilience to fire (particularly wildfires) is joining that conversation. Why? Because a “green” building that can't survive its environment isn't sustainable at all.

For facilities located near wildland-urban interfaces (WUI zones), this change is overdue. And it emphasizes how important it is to equip your site with real-time, event-specific detection and monitoring.

For environments like these, it's helpful to use systems that support zoning flexibility. These systems can isolate alerts to specific structures or areas - such as perimeter storage, staging yards, or access roads near potential fire paths.

When combined with early-warning outdoor detectors or even weather data integrations, fire alerts can become preemptive tools that prevent damage before suppression is even needed.

This level of protection is essential for facilities hoping to meet both resilience and sustainability goals. Achieving it begins with choosing a monitoring solution that supports customized and adaptable responses.

Design With Fire in Mind - Not as an Afterthought

Perhaps the biggest takeaway from the article is the reminder that fire safety is all-too-often reduced to a compliance checklist. In reality, fire safety should be a pillar of the entire design process - and that almost always requires more than just being "compliant".

"There was a clear urgency to the discussions... One of the conclusions was that fire needs to be an integrated part of building design, not an afterthought."

It's easy to see how this happens. Between budget pressures and aggressive timelines, fire protection systems can get added at the last minute. Unfortunately, that makes systems more prone to incompatibility, delay, or poor performance.

Digitize encourages a different approach: integration from day one. Our monitoring systems are compatible with both legacy and modern components. That helps you bring everything under a cohesive monitoring umbrella.

The Prism LX platform, for instance, supports dozens of modules and input types. This makes it ideal for phased construction projects or large campuses that evolve over time.

The head-end platform supports everything from water flow switches to suppression system fault signals.

Interconnectivity is the New Normal

One of the most insightful parts of Messerschmidt's article comes from her reflection on today's interconnected infrastructure.

"Infrastructure, technology, and operations are rapidly changing while being increasingly interdependent and interconnected."

From a fire safety perspective, this has huge implications. It's no longer enough to have standalone fire panels and detectors. Fire systems now must work in sync with access control, HVAC, backup power, and cybersecurity platforms.

Digitize monitoring equipment is designed to operate within these ecosystems. We offer relay outputs, integration with building management systems (BMS), and programmable logic functions that can, for example:

• Shut down HVAC when smoke is detected
• Activate emergency lighting or PA announcements
• Notify dispatch systems or external monitoring centers
• Prioritize alarm messages during multi-signal events

This kind of interoperability helps facilities stay safe even when multiple systems are impacted at once. Whether it's a fire that also disrupts the server room or a power outage that masks a smoldering hazard, connected systems give safety teams a clearer, faster picture.

Resilient Healthcare Starts With Fire Safety

Nowhere is resilience more essential than in healthcare. As Messerschmidt noted during a December workshop:

"Without buildings that can withstand the challenges of the future, we cannot provide healthcare when it is needed the most."

Hospitals, clinics, and long-term care facilities must remain functional in the wake of any emergency. Yet fires, floods, or system failures can make them vulnerable. That's why fire monitoring needs to go beyond local annunciation and basic compliance.

Prism LX head-ends allow hospital administrators to:

• Supervise fire panels across multiple wings or buildings
• Track valve status, suppression system health, and device faults
• Log all fire and supervisory events for compliance and review

In an environment where even seconds can affect patient outcomes, this degree of monitoring and control is non-negotiable.

Recovery Needs to Be Included

It's not just about responding to the immediate hazard. Recovery, continuity, and documentation must all be built into your monitoring plan.

"Resilience needs to be built in from the beginning."

Digitize systems can help you fulfill this guidance in two critical ways: event logging and restoration tracking. When a zone enters trouble, the system logs it. When it clears, that's logged too.

If a suppression valve is closed for maintenance and forgotten, the monitoring system can alert operators before an incident ever happens. Plus, our systems support audit trails for AHJ reviews or internal incident investigations. That's critical for rebuilding after an event, identifying weak links, and improving procedures for the future.

Resilience isn't a product you buy - it's a strategy you implement. You can, however, choose equipment that makes that strategy easier to carry out.

Resilience as a Movement, Not a Buzzword

Messerschmidt closes her article with a powerful reminder that resilience is more than just a policy term or checklist item.

"Resilience is resilient, and it may be one of our most powerful organizing tools for creating a safer future."

This is where the article becomes a call to action. Resilience won't happen unless we embed it in every decision we make - from design planning to system commissioning to maintenance schedules.

For facility managers, fire marshals, and life safety coordinators, this means choosing tools that don't just meet today's codes - but also provide flexibility, reliability, and transparency to meet tomorrow's risks.

Digitize will support you in achieving that mission. Whether your facility is a small municipal office or a multi-building defense complex, our monitoring systems help you move beyond compliance and toward true operational resilience.

Ready to Build Resilience Into Your Fire Monitoring Plan?

Resilient fire systems aren't a luxury. They're the backbone of safe, responsive, and adaptable buildings. With Digitize's collection of monitoring tools, integration options, and support for mission-critical environments, you can design and maintain a system that meets your safety goals today - and adapts to tomorrow's challenges.

Contact us today to schedule a resilience readiness consultation.

Call 1-800-523-7232
Email info@digitize-inc.com