Robust unattended and stolen object detection by fusing simple algorithms

Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. J. C. San Miguel, and J. M. Martínez, "Robust unattended and stolen object detection by fusing simple algorithms", in IEEE Fifth International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance, 2008. AVSS '08, 2008, p. 18 - 25In this paper a new approach for detecting unattended or stolen objects in surveillance video is proposed. It is based on the fusion of evidence provided by three simple detectors. As a first step, the moving regions in the scene are detected and tracked. Then, these regions are classified as static or dynamic objects and human or nonhuman objects. Finally, objects detected as static and nonhuman are analyzed with each detector. Data from these detectors are fused together to select the best detection hypotheses. Experimental results show that the fusion-based approach increases the detection reliability as compared to the detectors and performs considerably well across a variety of multiple scenarios operating at realtime.This work is supported by Cátedra Infoglobal-UAM for “Nuevas Tecnologías de video aplicadas a la seguridad”, by the Spanish Government (TEC2007-65400 SemanticVideo), by the Comunidad de Madrid (S- 050/TIC-0223 - ProMultiDis-CM), by the Consejería de Educación of the Comunidad de Madrid and by the European Social Fund

Pixel-based colour contrast for abandoned and stolen object discrimination in video surveillance

This paper is a postprint of a paper submitted to and accepted for publication in Electronics Letters and is subject to Institution of Engineering and Technology Copyright. The copy of record is available at IET Digital LibraryA novel approach is proposed for discriminating between abandoned or stolen previously detected stationary foreground regions in video surveillance. It is based on measuring the colour contrast of the contour of the stationary object under analysis at pixel level. Two contrasts are computed by analysing such a contour in the current and background frames. Then, both are combined for performing the discrimination. The experimental results over a heterogeneous dataset containing real scenarios demonstrate that this approach outperforms the related literature and greatly reduces the computational cost of the discrimination task, allowing real-time operation.This work has been partially supported by the Spanish Government (TEC2011-25995), by the Consejería de Educación of the Comunidad de Madrid and by The European Social Fund

Abandoned object detection in long-term video-surveillance

Due to recent events, global security concern is significantly increasing in our society. This area of concern is directly connected with the growing demand of video surveillance systems, mainly in public and crowded scenarios, such as railway stations, due to the potential risk they present. In order to avoid the arduous manual task of supervising a video surveillance system, automatic analysis and detection of this kind of events is the challenging task to be achieved. Although diverse systems trying to reach this goal have been proposed in the literature there is a lack of evaluation within this field. An end-to-end configurable system for abandoned and stolen object detection has been designed and developed by integrating available techniques. This systems integrates several algorithms in each module of the system, thus it allows the evaluation of several state-of-the art techniques combinations. An evaluation protocol considering short and long-term sequences has been designed by classifying available datasets and analysis evaluation metrics. A graphical user interface has been developed allowing the algorithms and parameters selection and adjustment for each stage of the system, as well as displaying the results. In addition, a new different system integrating recent and innovative state of the art proposals has been proposed.Debido a los acontecimientos recientes, la preocupación por la seguridad global está incrementando en nuestra sociedad. Este motivo de preocupación está directmente realacionado con la creciente demanda de sistemas de vídeo vigilancia, principalmente en espacios publicos y transitados, tales como estaciones de tren, debido al potencial riesgo que presentan. Con el fin de evitar la ardua tarea manual de supervisar un sistema de video vigilancia, surge la difícil tarea de analizar y detectar automáticamente eventos como el robo y abandono de objetos. Aunque se han propuesto diversos sistemas tratando de alcanzar esta meta, aún se carece de un marco de evaluación en este área. En este trabajo se ha diseñado y desarrollado un sistema completo configurable para la detección de eventos abandonados y robados integrando las técnicas disponibles en el estado del arte. El sistema integra diferentes algoritmos en cada uno de sus módulos, haciendo posible la evaluación de diferentes combinaciones. Se ha diseñado también un protocolo de evaluación para secuencias de corto y largo plazo, mediante la clasificación de las mismas y el análisis de métricas de evaluación. Se ha desarrollado una interfaz gráfica de usuario que permite la selección y ajuste de los algoritmos y parámetros para cada módulo, así como la visualización de los resultados de cada etapa. Además, se ha propuesto un nuevo sistema que integra diferentes técnicas recientes del estado del arte

Children’s perspectives on disorder and violence in urban neighbourhoods

UID/SOC/04647/2013Based on the analysis of 312 children’s neighbourhood drawings and narratives, this article discusses children’s socialization in six public housing neighbourhoods in Portugal, through children’s personal accounts of their lives. It then examines their perspectives on disorder and violence. Most complained about living in their neighbourhoods, referencing how social and spatial segregation, associated with a high exposure to violence, affect them. There is a ‘normalization’ of disorder and violence, due to its intense frequency, mainly in public spaces, which has an effect on children’s socialization, especially those to whom the street is ‘the’ central place in daily life.authorsversionpublishe

DePaul Law Magazine, Fall 1996

https://via.library.depaul.edu/dialogue/1022/thumbnail.jp

The West Digest System: The Ninth Circuit and the Montana Supreme Court

The West Digest System: The Ninth Circuit and the Montana Supreme Cour

Investigative Detention: A Search/Seizure by Any Other Name?

In the early years of the Charter, the Supreme Court of Canada pledged to interpret the section 8 right to be secure against unreasonable search or seizure restrictively — the Constitution “does not itself confer any powers, even of ‘reasonable’ search and seizure, on … governments” (Hunter v. Southam (1984)). Two decades later, without government advancing statutory authority, the Court recognized, in effect created, an investigative detention power as an integral and necessary aspect of street policing and exception to the arbitrary detention protection of section 9 of the Charter (R. v. Mann (2004)). This police-initiated detention, effectively a warrantless seizure of the person, in turn raises issues of search of the detainee, questioning of the detainee on occasion amounting to a search, and the exercise of incidental powers raising section 8 Charter issues. The investigative detention power, immersed in a matrix of search and seizure issues, but currently analyzed exclusively in section 9 Charter language, might more purposively be measured for compliance with constitutional principles through section 8 analysis with the onus upon government to justify circumstances of warrantless detention/seizure of the pedestrian or driver. With the low visibility of investigative detention, the absence of effective administrative review of its exercise, and its disproportionate impact on the young, the poor and visible minorities, the courts, in the absence of Parliamentary action, must discharge their duty to bring greater clarity, if not accountability, into the process