Video-Based Surveillance Systems: Computer Vision and Distributed Processing

Monitoring of public and private sites has increasingly become a very sensitive issue resulting in a patchwork of privacy laws varying from country to country -though all aimed at protecting the privacy of the citizen. It is important to remember, however, that monitoring and vi­ sual surveillance capabilities can also be employed to aid the citizen. The focus of current development is primarily aimed at public and cor­ porate safety applications including the monitoring of railway stations, airports, and inaccessible or dangerous environments. Future research effort, however, has already targeted citizen-oriented applications such as monitoring assistants for the aged and infirm, route-planning and congestion-avoidance tools, and a range of environment al monitoring applications. The latest generation of surveillance systems has eagerly adopted re­ cent technological developments to produce a fully digital pipeline of digital image acquisition, digital data transmission and digital record­ ing. The resultant surveillance products are highly-fiexihle, capahle of generating forensic-quality imagery, and ahle to exploit existing Internet and wide area network services to provide remote monitoring capability.