Working in partnership with Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service, Telent have developed and deployed the VLS, to address the challenge of high-rise building evacuations. VLS comprises a hand-portable, self-contained, highly directional acoustic device that is able to deliver spoken commands and instructions at very high acoustic levels over distances up to 1000m – 1500m.
By enabling audio communication with residents of high rise building and other multiple occupancy residential buildings, the VLS solution is a valuable tool that can support fire and rescue services implement recommendation 33.22b of the Grenfell Report.
That fire and rescue services develop policies for partial and total evacuation of high-rise residential buildings and training to support them.
VLS allows officers at an incident to communicate over a significant range with multiple occupants of a high-rise building simultaneously, to prove updates, safety instructions and evacuation orders. It provides multi-lingual capability through the use of pre-record standard commands. VLS has applications and use-cases for many other emergency service and public safety incidents such as flooding and wild fires.