The deployment of surveillance systems has captured the interest of both
the research and the industrial worlds in recent years. The aim of this
effort is to increase security and safety in several application domains
such as national security, home and bank safety, traffic monitoring and
navigation, tourism, and military applications. The video surveillance
systems currently in use share one feature: A human operator must
monitor them at all times, thus limiting the number of cameras and the
area under surveillance and increasing cost. A more advantageous system
would have continuous active warning capabilities, able to alert
security officials during or even before the happening of a crime.
Existing automated surveillance systems can be classified into
categories according to:
- The environment they are primarily designed to observe;
- The number of sensors that the automated surveillance system can
handle;
- The mobility of sensor.
The primary concern of this book is surveillance in an outdoor urban
setting, where it is not possible for a single camera to observe the
complete area of interest. Multiple cameras are required to observe such
large environments. This book discusses and proposes techniques for
development of an automated multi-camera surveillance system for outdoor
environments, while identifying the important issues that a system needs
to cope with in realistic surveillance scenarios. The goal of the
research presented in this book is to build systems that can deal
effectively with these realistic surveillance needs.