Real-Time Campus Security Platform Built on Jmix

The Challenge

Campus security operations generate thousands of daily data points - from patrol check-ins and incident reports to equipment monitoring and visitor logs. RuiXuan Zhu set out to build a unified platform that could handle this complexity while keeping field staff mobile and responsive.

The system needed to serve multiple stakeholders: administrators coordinating operations, security personnel executing patrols, safety officers tracking compliance, and third-party maintenance teams responding to equipment alerts. All of this required real-time synchronization between a desktop management interface and mobile devices in the field.

Technical Architecture

Technical Requirements That Drove the Design

• Complex Domain Model at Scale.
  Managing 100+ interconnected entities (personnel records, equipment inventories, patrol routes, incident logs) without drowning in boilerplate code.

• Workflow Without Overhead.
  The operations are structured but not rigid enough to justify a full BPM engine - the platform needed built-in workflow patterns that stayed out of the way.

• Mobile-First Execution.
  Field staff needed to execute tasks, scan location markers, and submit reports without leaving the WeChat ecosystem.

• Multi-Tenant from Day One.
  Built to scale across universities, each with isolated data and independent admin controls.

• Real-Time Device Integration.
  Third-party sensors and alarms needed to push alerts directly into the workflow without manual intervention.

• Complex Data Relationships.
  Import/export processes had to preserve referential integrity across deeply nested entity relationships.

Why Jmix Won the Stack Decision

Implementation Highlights

The backend architecture manages all 100+ entities with automatic creation and modification timestamping, where Jmix Studio generated the initial views while custom business logic lives in entity event handlers and background jobs. The team made a deliberate choice to skip BPM tooling, keeping the codebase lean by enforcing workflows through state machines and validation logic rather than external orchestration. Custom Apache POI integration handles complex Excel operations that preserve multi-level entity relationships during bulk data migration, which proved critical for initial system setup and periodic data exchanges.

The platform implements a multi-tenancy model where each university operates as an isolated tenant, with administrators using the full backend interface while field staff access a streamlined WeChat mini-program. Bulk account provisioning keeps onboarding efficient, and permission inheritance from the tenant level simplifies access control. The notification architecture leverages WeChat messaging instead of traditional email, delivering task assignments, alerts, and updates directly in the platform users are already monitoring throughout the day.

The mobile experience bridges physical and digital operations through QR code scanning and NFC tag reading, allowing staff to instantly pull up location details and equipment records without manual lookups during patrols and inspections. The IoT pipeline completes the integration picture, with REST webhooks from fire alarms, pressure sensors, and other monitoring equipment feeding directly into the incident management workflow to trigger alerts and create service tickets automatically.

Production Impact

The platform currently runs in production at two major Chinese universities - Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Chengdu University of Technology - where it serves over 300 active users daily across security staff, administrators, and service teams. The system processes more than 2,000 daily operations including patrol logs, incident reports, visitor registrations, and equipment checks, demonstrating its capacity to handle real-world operational load at scale.

What makes this implementation particularly sustainable is the development continuity model, where junior students inherit the codebase and add new features under faculty supervision. This approach not only demonstrates the maintainability of the architecture and effectiveness of knowledge transfer, but ensures the platform evolves with changing campus security needs while providing hands-on learning opportunities for successive cohorts of computer science students.