Evolutionary optimization of spatially-distributed multi-sensors placement for indoor surveillance environments with security levels

The surveillance multi-sensor placement is an important optimization problem that consists of positioning several sensors of different types to maximize the coverage of a determined area while minimizing the cost of the deployment. In this work, we tackle a modified version of the problem, consisting of spatially distributed multi-sensor placement for indoor surveillance. Our approach is focused on security surveillance of sensible indoor spaces, such as military installations, where distinct security levels can be considered. We propose an evolutionary algorithm to solve the problem, in which a novel special encoding (integer encoding with binary conversion) and effective initialization have been defined to improve the performance and convergence of the proposed algorithm. We also consider the probability of detection for each surveillance point, which depends on the distance to the sensor at hand, to better model real-life scenarios. We have tested the proposed evolutionary approach in different instances of the problem, varying both size and difficulty and obtained excellent results regarding the cost of sensors’ placement and convergence time of the algorithm. • Tackle a spatially distributed multi-sensors placement problem with security levels. • Useful for security surveillance of sensible indoor spaces, such as military installations. • Proposal of an evolutionary algorithm with specific encoding and effective initialization. • Comparison with alternative algorithms in different-sized scenarios.