Computer Aided Modular Geometric Modeling,to Study the Perception of Safety – Natural Surveillance for Perceived Personal Security

Natural surveillance is one key factor proposed, in the approach to decrease fear of crime. Building fenestrations and outdoor spaces like terrace, balconies and verandas that extend the interior spaces and the indoor activities, beyond the closed external shell of the buildings, are proposed by CPTED, in their place specific policy guidelines, to help design out fear and crime. In this background, this study on natural surveillance opportunities, explores typological variations of these component outdoor spaces of buildings, in line with variations in size and location. The affordances considered for this study specifically focus on the ways in which these spaces structure the visual fields for the external observer. This paper thus reports the survey of visual preferences exploring the spatial affordances of building spaces and their association with fear of crime