Which combination of indicators would you use to determine occupancy in a building at night?

• A. Signs of forced entry
• B. People around site
• C. Alarm triggered
• D. Signs of forced entry and People around site and Alarm triggered

Answer: (D)

To determine if a building is occupied at night, you need to look for multiple supporting signals rather than relying on a single clue. Signs of a forced entry can indicate someone might have breached the perimeter, but that doesn’t prove there’s someone inside or actively there now. Observing people around the site provides external activity that increases the likelihood of occupancy, yet it still doesn’t confirm interior presence. An alarm being triggered is a direct alert to an intrusion event, but alarms can be faulty or caused by non-occupancy factors.

When you combine all three—evidence of forced entry, people around the site, and an alarm trigger—you get corroborating signals from different angles. This triangulation makes the assessment of occupancy more reliable in the dark, where visibility and certainty are reduced. Therefore, using all three indicators together offers the strongest basis for determining occupancy at night.