(Makris and Ellis, 2002) also proposed a model for
extracting pedestrian trajectories in outdoors environ-
ments. In this model, paths are described by means of
entry/exit zones and junctions (regions where routes
cross each other). (Piciarelli et al., 2005) discussed a
trajectory clustering method suited for video surveil-
lance and monitoring systems. One great advantage
of this method is its capacity for dynamically build-
ing clusters in real-time.
In contrast to these works, we address trajectory
analysis from a more general point of view. Our
definition of the trajectory concept is based on re-
strictions, which allow us to not only define trajec-
tories but also who or when moving objects can fol-
low them. In fact, flexibility and generality are two
key issues when designing surveillance systems. This
way, the model proposed in this paper lets expand the
concept to be analyzed with new restrictions when
needed.
In this paper, we propose a surveillance system
based on normality components. The global normal-
ity analysis in an environment is given from the unifi-
cation of partial analysis offered for each component.
One of these components aims at analyzing trajecto-
ries followed by objects and deals with uncertainty
and imprecision by means of the fuzzy logic theory
(Zadeh, 1996). Fuzzy logic allows us to easily work
with uncertainty and to deploy a relatively simple sys-
tem with short response times.
The rest of this paper is organized in the follow-
ing way. Section 2 describes the architecture of the
intelligent surveillance system. This system includes
a module that analyzes the trajectories followed by
objects. Section 3 discusses in detail the trajectory
normality component. In Section 4, we show how
this component works in a real environment through
a case study. Finally, Section 5 concludes the paper
and suggests future research lines.
2 DESCRIPTION OF THE
SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE
The architecture of our surveillance system (OCU-
LUS) consists of three main layers. Layer 0 refers to
the perceptual layer, that is, the information retrieval
from the environment by means of different sensors.
Such information can be directly sent to the upper
layer (e.g. presence sensors) or processed in order
to obtain the required data (e.g. video or audio). It is
important to remark that most of this information is
surrounded by uncertainty and vagueness and, there-
fore, our model deals with this handicap from the per-
ceptual layer.
Layer 1 refers to the conceptual layer that covers
all the mechanisms for normality analysis. Interac-
tions with Layer 0 involve the set of input variables
(V) used to analyze the environment normality and
the set of domain definitions (DDV) of such variables.
Each normality component is responsible for analyz-
ing the normality about a concrete concept. OCULUS
makes possible to dinamically add or remove compo-
nents. For example, if we require to add a normality
concept about correct accesses, OCULUS allows to
directly plug it in. Due to the inherently distributed
nature of surveillance and the different components of
the architecture, a multi-agent system has been used
to support OCULUS. There are different agents spe-
cialized into each one of the normality concepts de-
ployed. When an agent is instantiated into the agent
platform, it automatically loads the knowledge about
the normality component required. Currently, we are
using CLIPS for representing such knowledge and for
making the reasoning process and the middleware Ze-
roC ICE (Henning, 2004) for carrying out communi-
cation among agents.
Finally, Layer 2 refers to crisis management and
decision making processes. The information used by
this layer depends on the analysis of Layer 1, which
may come from three modules defined on top of Layer
1: i) identification of anomalous situations, that is,
what is exactly going wrong; ii) identification of pos-
sible situations that are non-normal; and iii) informa-
tion about the future behavior of a suspicious element.
3 TRAJECTORY ANALYSIS
COMPONENT
This section will focus on describing the normality
component which analyzes normal trajectories to de-
tect anomalous situations.
3.1 Knowledge-base Building
In a monitored environment, each camera has an as-
sociated knowledge base (KB) which is used by the
system to analyze trajectories. To ease the KB build-
ing, we have developed a knowledge acquisition tool.
A security expert uses this tool for defining the zones
and normal trajectories which are observed from the
camera. A zone is a polygon composed of a set of
points and drawn by a security expert making use of
the tool previously mentioned. Polygons are directly
drawn over a frame captured by the camera, and la-
beled with a unique identifier. Next, this informa-
tion, together with the output of the segmentation and
tracking processes, is used by the system to determine
INTELLIGENT SURVEILLANCE FOR TRAJECTORY ANALYSIS - Detecting Anomalous Situations in Monitored
Environments
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