Advanced: Smoke Control – Growing Priority in the Middle East

Alongside rapid development in the Middle East, the region is experiencing fast growth in demand for fire safety products. Current trends in Saudi Arabia and the wider region show that UL-approved fire safety systems with integrated smoke control are gaining popularity, offering solutions suitable for both high-rise residential buildings and large commercial sites.

By: Shadi Elhag, Business Development Manager for the Middle East, Advanced

The Middle East is in the midst of a historic construction cycle. In Saudi Arabia, this has been visible through the development of giga projects, new high-rises, vast transport hubs, and dense mixed-use districts. The Kingdom now boasts approximately 47 skyscrapers with an average floor count of 60 to 70 floors. However, this development is set to further rise with a shift away from oil exports towards a new growth in tourism. One such example of this shift is the Rise Tower, which is a planned 2km tall skyscraper in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, designed to be the world’s tallest building.

New Saudi Fire Protection Code

However, alongside this growth is a demand for fire safety to protect inhabitants. This has led to UL fire safety systems gaining significant popularity in the region. However, with smoke inhalation recognized as the primary cause of fire-related deaths, UL fire safety systems with integrated smoke control are becoming increasingly popular. This has been consolidated by several recent tragedies, which have resulted in deaths due to smoke inhalation. A recent example was the blaze at Cairo Telecommunications in Egypt in July 2025, where four workers were killed, with at least 22 injured. A health ministry spokesperson stated that the injuries were mostly due to smoke inhalation.

In light of such tragedies, smoke control has risen up the agenda in Saudi Arabia, with a chapter on Smoke Control Systems included in the new Saudi Fire Protection code. This signals the importance of designing and installing fire safety systems, which include robust smoke control. Consequently, UL fire safety systems that include integrated smoke control have taken center stage.

Innovative Smoke Control Approach

Witnessing an increased number of requests from customers for smoke control, especially from residential projects and hotels with six floors and above, Advanced offers a versatile fire alarm system with its Axis AX addressable fire panel featuring an innovative smoke control approach with its DynamixSmoke, which is approved to UL864 standards and complies with UUKL requirements.

Advanced’s Axis AX combines addressable panels, the latest in sensor technology, CO devices, audio systems, and command centers, delivering high performance, quality, and ease of use. Its powerful networking capabilities, extensive configuration options, and comprehensive cause-and-effect programming put end-users in complete control of their fire alarm system. An impressive feature of the Axis AX is its scalability. It can deliver fast, reliable communications from a two-panel network up to a large 200-node network. Very few manufacturers can offer the capacity to connect up to 200 panels, making the Axis AX ideal for small and large projects. The Axis AX also features additional integrated features, including smoke control and voice evacuation.

Simplifying smoke control design, the Axis AX’s DynamixSmoke gives complete and active control of fans and dampers from the fire system, and it also makes smoke control easier to install, configure, and operate. This is thanks to its simple four-step configuration process. Using a simple grid format to configure fans and dampers saves hours of setup time, allowing a working system in minutes instead of days, and gives an at-a-glance view of all settings. Listed for both dedicated and non-dedicated applications, it provides automatic and manual options for controlling fans and dampers.

Offering quick, clear configuration of smoke compartments across sites, DynamixSmoke also provides simple cause-and-effect programming and auto-configuration of fan and damper interfaces. In addition, it offers complete customized control, including post-alarm purge, cascade options, interlocks, sequential fan restart, automatic testing, and stairwell pressurization, helping control smoke and airflow for safe evacuation.

Voice Evacuation Ideal for High-Rise Residential Buildings

Another feature that customers are increasingly asking for is fire-alarm systems with voice evacuation. This is particularly important for the raft of high-rise developments. Despite the emergence of high-tech fire engines equipped with new taller evacuation ladders, generally, ladders only extend to the tenth floor, making a robust fire system essential.

The flexible Axis AX therefore offers critical voice evacuation with integrated audio for automatic (and manual) fire alarm signaling and live voice paging during emergencies. For example, the Axis AX was selected to provide fire protection for the Marassi Galleria Shopping Mall in Bahrain. This large-scale development required a total of 47 Axis AX fire panels to be installed in a network, complete with voice evacuation systems, amplifiers, and firefighter telephones. This project illustrates the demand for centralized high-performance solutions that ensure easy access and control for firefighters in emergencies, with customers preferring integrated solutions, like the Axis AX, that combine not only fire detection and voice evacuation but also smoke control, all in one system.

Axis AX voice evacuation allows 16 pre-recorded messages and multiple language variants, so the panel can operate autonomously without interaction to evacuate a building if the fire brigade isn’t present. If the fire brigade is in attendance, Axis AX provides robust telephone communication channels to ensure maximum safety. The fire and emergency telephone system identifies the location of field telephone users during emergencies since users can plug a telephone into an Axis AX fire panel to communicate the situation on a given floor to aid in evacuation.

However, with voice evacuations, problems can sometimes arise if audio doesn’t sync, and people can hear multiple messages at once. To solve this, the Axis AX range features the unique PerfectSync, which ensures audio synchronization across the entire network to avoid confusion from mixed messages. This includes large networks where it is possible to deliver a message from the first panel to the 200th with highly synchronized fast messaging to help people evacuate faster in case of fire. This is ideal for high-rise residential buildings, large shopping centers, or universities. The clarity it provides helps ensure safer evacuation.

One Resilient System

With high-rise construction booming across the Middle East, the need for dependable and fully integrated fire safety solutions has never been greater. By streamlining critical functions, such as smoke control and voice evacuation through a single fire panel, integrated systems enable faster, more coordinated responses for fire services. Advanced’s Axis AX is designed to combine fire detection, smoke control, voice evacuation, and communications in one resilient system. This makes it the ideal solution for the Middle East’s high-rise developments.