Security and Surveillance

Abstract

Human eyes are highly efficient devices for scanning through a large quantity of low-level visual sensory data and delivering selective information to one's brain for high-level semantic interpretation and gaining situational awareness. Over the last few decades, the computer vision community has endeavoured to bring about similar perceptual capabilities to artificial visual sensors. Substantial efforts have been made towards understanding static images of individual objects and the corresponding processes in the human visual system. This endeavour is intensified further by the need for understanding a massive quantity of video data, with the aim to comprehend multiple entities not only within a single image but also over time across multiple video frames for understanding their spatio-temporal relations. A significant application of video analysis and understanding is intelligent surveillance, which aims to interpret automatically human activity and detect unusual events that could pose a threat to public security and safety.