Personal electronic gas detectors revolutionized gas detection programs and vastly improved worker safety in the 1980s and 1990s. Personal electronic gas detectors represented a huge leap forward from gas lamps and canaries. Since then, innovations including infrared imaging, ultrasonic sensors and holographic techniques have been introduced to detect gas in both personal monitors and in fixed systems. While these techniques are highly effective and sophisticated, they are intended to solve a specific challenge, to tell a worker using the gas detector when dangerous levels of gas are present.
But there is more to do to ensure worker safety beyond alerting a specific worker. The Industrial Internet of Things, which brings cost-effective connectivity and communication, provides the foundation and opens up the opportunity to further increase productivity and improve safety.