SignalsThe availability layer
CONCEPT WALKTHROUGH
Availability is not a new sensor problem. A campus that has been scanned and modeled already holds the geometry: where the racks sit, how many each holds, which rooms seat how many, what the walk between them is. What the model cannot say is what is there at 10:14 on a Tuesday. That is the only part cameras add. Put the two together and you get a count that a student can act on and a planner can spend against.
Delivered architectural models frequently arrive with no space objects at all: geometry is complete, but there are no named rooms and no areas to read. In that case the plan above is not taken from the model's room schedule; it is reconstructed from the wall and site geometry, then named against the campus space list. Both paths end in the same table, and the table is what everything downstream counts against.
With the zones in a coordinate system, existing camera positions can be tested rather than guessed: which zones are already seen, which are half seen, which need one more camera and where it should go. On this campus core, eleven of fourteen zones are covered by cameras already on the network.
Every later question resolves to a row in it. Free spaces is capacity minus a count. Utilization is occupancy against area. A work order routes to a zone, not a camera number. Build the table once from the model and the rest stops being bespoke integration work.
Willowdale College is an invented campus and every figure on this page is simulated. The model handling described here reflects a real workflow run against delivered architectural models.
The same plan, with counts on it. Tap any zone for what is behind the number.
Bikes in a rack, people in a room, cars on a level, a line at a counter. Objects and counts against a zone, held as numbers. The camera frame is not the record; the count is.
Processing placement is settled per deployment during the site survey: on site, cloud, or a mix.
A student wants the number now. Planning wants the number every hour for a term, which is the thing a clipboard survey in October can never produce. Same sensor, same zone table, different time horizon.
Percent of capacity. Two racks are pinned through the middle of the day while a third never passes a third full, four minutes' walk away.
Weekday average, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Two rooms carry the load and three are quiet enough to reassign or close on Fridays.
Library South and Quad North run full from 9 to 3. Structure B rack sits at 22% four minutes away. Move 24 hoops before quoting a new cage, and hang wayfinding off the live count so the walk is a known quantity rather than a gamble.
Illustrative: a 60-space covered cage runs roughly $40,000 to $60,000 installed. Relocating existing hoops is grounds crew time. Both figures need a campus quote before anyone relies on them.
Three study spaces sit under a quarter full every weekday afternoon. Consolidating Friday hours into two buildings is a utilities and staffing line for this term, and the occupancy record is the evidence that it will not strand anybody.
The line peaks in a 35 minute window that moves with the class timetable. Staffing the counter to the actual curve, and publishing the wait to the student app, moves the peak instead of absorbing it.
Occupancy by zone by hour, held against the model's own geometry, is a layer the institution owns. It ages with the building and gives a delivered model a reason to stay current instead of freezing on handover day.
Everything below is the same zone table, read the other way round. This is the surface that makes people believe the campus notices them, and it costs nothing extra to produce once the counts exist.
Three minutes from where you are, and it has not gone full before 11 a.m. all term. Library South is full.
18 seats free and the quietest of the five spaces open right now. Science atrium has 40 free if you want to talk.
The line usually doubles at 11:50. Going now is the cheap option; the north counter is the shorter of the two.
Levels 3 and 4 are effectively empty. Ground level has been full since 8:40.
Evening walk escorts run from 7 p.m. and the north walkway is lit end to end.
The same zone table carries the rest of the campus story without a second install: after-hours presence and door state for the safety team, occupancy against the registrar's schedule for space planning, work orders that route to a zone with the clip attached for facilities.
Thermostats, building management and scheduling systems join the same table as further inputs rather than as separate dashboards. Availability is the visible half; the table underneath is the asset.