We present a robust framework for using highly detailed simulations to provide the foundation for evaluating and designing a surveillance system's ability to detect outbreaks. A small demonstration study shows that detection rates varied from 17% to 80% across the different surveillance systems. Increased coverage did not linearly improve detection probability for all surveillance systems. Surveillance systems with uniform coverage of the population did not perform better than one based on a real-world system with nonuniform coverage. Higher coverage improved the timeliness of detection but, for most cases, by only 1 or 2 days on average. Additional results can be found online (http://ndssl.vbi.vt.edu/insilicoSurveillance/).