An immune based two-phase approach for the multiple-type surveillance camera location problem

For the recent years, there are more and more surveillance cameras set on lanes, train/bus stations, hospitals, schools, banks, supermarkets, shopping malls, etc., to improve the safety of people around them. In Taiwan, the so-called “E-Patrol” system is used to support policemen for providing patrol services and several criminal cases have been solved with the use of surveillance cameras of “E-Patrol” system. It is well known that inappropriate settings of surveillance cameras will result in some dead angles and oversetting of surveillance cameras will waste limited resources. The setting of surveillance cameras is an important issue and a complicated NP problem. In this paper, we consider the design problem of multiple-type surveillance cameras on various lanes in which two kinds of variables have to be decided simultaneously, namely, discrete variables for types of surveillance cameras and continuous variables for locations of surveillance cameras. The main purposes of this paper are (i) to propose an immune based two-phase approach for solving the optimal design of multiple-type surveillance camera problem, and (ii) to show the excellent performance of the proposed two-phase approach.