Skip to content
IRIS NEURALContact

Solutions by typePersonal safety

What if someone walks into a hot zone in street clothes?

Street clothes in the pump area

It’s 12:10 p.m. in the pump yard of a refinery. A technician from an outside firm steps out of the van without the flame-resistant kit that area requires. He only needs a photo of a pump nameplate to prepare a quote: three minutes and he is gone. He walks through the gate without anyone stopping him, because the gatekeeper recognizes the van and is on the phone. Nobody says anything to him.

4 cameras across 4 sectors

This is how you ask for it

«Tell me if anyone enters the pump area without flame-resistant clothing.»

In that area, clothing isn’t a uniform: it’s the protection. Jeans and a cotton T-shirt don’t survive a flash, and the person who knows that best is the one who just walked in, twenty years in the trade and in a hurry today. If nothing happens, nothing happens and no record exists. If something happens, the cost is a serious burn and an entire investigation devoted to explaining why that person was there without the clothing the area requires.

You decide once

The refinery decides once what clothing each zone requires and where it gets checked. If someone crosses the gate of the pump yard, at any hour, and isn’t wearing the area’s clothing, then the gatehouse is alerted with the camera and the image, while the person is still on the threshold. It’s decided once and applies equally to your own staff and to anyone from outside, with no exceptions for familiar faces.

There are areas where clothing is the only thing between a person and a burn. In a pump yard it is a flame-resistant suit. In a high-voltage bay it is protective clothing, gloves and a hard hat. In a pharmaceutical clean room it is the gown, the mask and the shoe covers, and there what is being protected isn’t the person: it’s the batch. Three worlds that look nothing alike, and the same rule at the door.

The day it goes wrong, it’s almost never someone who broke the rule on purpose. It’s the technician who came to take a photo, the sales rep escorting a visit, the operator who went out for a tool and came back the short way. Nobody changes clothes for three minutes. And a flash, or a particle entering a clean room, doesn’t distinguish between three minutes and a full shift.

IRIS watches the door and compares what it sees with what the area requires. If the clothing isn’t the area’s, it says so at the threshold, while the person is still crossing and can turn back. It doesn’t check certificates and doesn’t know whether a garment is approved. It sees whether someone is dressed for work or dressed for the street, and in some places that difference is everything.

What changes

Before, the control was the eye of the person at the gate, and that eye has bad days, a ringing phone and a familiar van. Now the alert fires at the threshold, with the image of whoever is crossing, and the gatekeeper can stop them before they reach the skid. What changes isn’t the rule, which was already written. What changes is that it now holds on the days when everything’s chaos.

Where we have seen it

  • A hospital hallway and the double door of a restricted area, wide open, with the red light on above it and the theater visible at the back. Someone in street clothes is standing in the doorway, hand on the door leaf, at a door you only go through in scrubs. On the right, two professionals are talking at the end of the hallway and another walks away; in the foreground, the unit desk, with someone working at it. IRIS sees that somebody is crossing a door that’s closed at this hour. It tells street clothes from scrubs; it does not know who anyone is.

    CAM-125Street clothes in a restricted area

    «Tell me if somebody goes through the restricted-area door without work clothes, and tell me while they are still in the doorway, not once they have been inside a while.»

    See this cameraThe hospital

  • A sunny morning in the pump area. Three workers wear blue flame-resistant coveralls, white hard hats and gloves. In the middle of the walkway stands someone with bare arms and legs: they have a hard hat, but no flame-resistant clothing. To their left, orange drums are stacked with the flammable-goods diamond on the side, and behind them a green vessel carries the same label. One of the workers is already pointing at them. The camera sees the kit that’s missing.

    CAM-331Bare arms in the pump area

    «Tell me if anyone enters the pump area without flame-resistant clothing.»

    See this cameraIndustry

  • Six fifteen in the morning, in the gowning room before the clean area. Three people are getting ready. Two are fully dressed: hood, mask, gloves and blue overshoes; one waits in front of the air shower. The third walks toward the door with the hood on, face uncovered and white street shoes with nothing over them. On the wall, the sign with the five compulsory items. IRIS doesn’t look at who is going in: it looks at which items are on and which are missing before the last door.

    CAM-280Through the gowning room with no mask and street shoes on

    «Tell me if somebody reaches the air shower door without a mask or without overshoes, before they go through.»

    See this cameraIndustry

  • Mid-morning. Someone crosses the gravel of the yard, between the transformer and the switchgear, and reaches out toward the cells. No hard hat, no face shield, no gloves, no arc-rated clothing. Beside them, blue arcs are visible on the switchgear. Here nobody has to decide how many people are too many: one person without protection at that distance is already the incident.

    CAM-347No protective clothing beside the live cells

    «Tell me if anyone enters the high-voltage zone without a hard hat, gloves and protective clothing, even if they are only walking through.»

    See this cameraIndustry

What it doesn’t do

IRIS does not check whether a garment is approved, whether it is the class the rules demand, or whether it still has service life left. It sees whether the clothing looks like the area’s or like the street.

And it identifies nobody: it does not know whether that person is staff, a contractor or a visitor. Matching the alert to who was authorized is the organization’s job.

Questions

Can it tell work clothing from street clothing?
Yes, when the difference is visible. An orange flame-resistant suit, a white gown with shoe covers or a set of overalls look nothing like a T-shirt and jeans, and that’s exactly the comparison IRIS makes on the camera image. What it doesn’t do is distinguish two similar-looking garments, or know whether the one being worn is the right one for that specific area. That takes a person.
Does it check that the garment is approved?
No, and it’s worth saying up front. A certificate doesn’t show up in an image: IRIS doesn’t know whether that suit meets the class the rules demand, whether it has expired, or whether it’s been washed so many times that it no longer protects. That’s controlled by the stores and checked by a person. What IRIS adds is the part nobody controls today: that whoever walks in is dressed for work and not for the street.
Does it alert before the person goes in?
Yes, and it’s the only way for the alert to be worth anything. The camera goes at the compulsory crossing point — the turnstile, the compound gate, the anteroom of the air shower — and the rule is written on the threshold, not on the whole area. That way the alert arrives while the person can still turn around and put on what is needed. An alert ten minutes later is only good for a telling-off.
Does it work for a clean room or a pharma gowning area?
Yes, and there what is protected isn’t the person but the product. The rule is the same with different garments: mask, shoe covers, gown. You ask for the alert at the door of the air shower, before anyone crosses it, because once inside the problem is no longer solved by changing clothes: it’s solved by scrapping a batch. That’s the cost being avoided, and it’s usually a large one.

See all the questions

Demo · IRIS at work

We won’t just tell you. We’ll show you.

It’s a summary of the real screen: it plays by itself, step by step, and shows only the path of one case. The actual tool has far more than fits in here.

  1. The alert fires
  2. It lands in the tray
  3. You open it
  4. You confirm or dismiss
IRIS NEURAL
30ES
IRISDirectoGrabacionesGISIncidencias3996SituaciónCasosLPRAutomatizacionesIRIS DATA
Ask a question or make a request…Send
IRIS · Infinity Neural

Not seeing yours here?

These words are the ones we have built, not the ones IRIS understands. The list falls short on purpose: you ask for it in a sentence, and sentences don’t run out. Tell us what is in front of your cameras and we’ll tell you whether it understands it, or not yet.

See all solutionsTell us what you see

And the best part

No building work, no trenches, no new cabling:the cameras are already up and already looking.

What changes is what happens to the picture. It used to be stored and never seen; now it’s understood while it happens, on the same equipment you bought years ago.

Tell us your problem and we’ll say whether IRIS understands it, or not yet.

A person answers, the same working day.