Despite advances in computational design in the building sector, security system design is still based on software and design paradigms from the previous century. This leads to long design times as well as to inadequate system designs. This talk describes a new system design that automatically generates video monitoring layouts for architectural designs. The method was developed and commercially implemented by BeamUP, a start-up in the construction-tech field.

BeamUP’s method is based on the hypothesis that for surveillance purposes, architectural designs can be split up into a set of small, relatively simple rooms which can be designed one at a time. To achieve this BeamUP introduces two main innovations: A web-based graphic user interface that allows designers to describe security requirements as to design goals and assign them to rooms or areas in the design. Distributed, cloud-based optimization solvers which are used to automatically generate security designs at a linear time regardless of the size of the design.