As a result of the ever-increasing threat of terrorism both international and domestic, as well as a rise in street crimes in many municipalities, security directors nationwide are increasingly challenged to protect their facilities, employees and visitors. The security departments in many facilities have large numbers of CCTV cameras in their video surveillance systems, making the job of monitoring them a daunting task. In the past, cameras were displayed on the monitors only when motion was detected. This technique was used to minimize the amount of visual information that the security officer at the command and control center had to view at one time. However, there are many 24-hour facilities such as hospitals that are active during all hours of the day and night. This makes motion detection technology a less-than-optimal solution for these types of accounts.
However, recent advances in digital technology have made the job of monitoring these vast numbers of cameras a somewhat more manageable task. An innovative and developing technology with much promise for the future is behavior recognition software programs. These types of software programs utilize complex mathematical algorithms to track pedestrians and vehicles as they pass in the field of view of a camera, and then classify the motion and activities of each. This type of a program is designed to detect an array of aberrant behaviors such as someone lying on the floor, erratic pedestrian motions, a person or vehicle staying in one place for an extended period, a person or vehicle traveling against the flow of traffic, someone running, someone dropping a bag or other item, objects newly appearing on the scene, etc. A person who has fallen, for example, can be detected by the system program using a combination of velocity and geometric shape analysis. Using these programs, the security officer’s efficiency can be maximized by having a few key surveillance cameras displayed continuously, while the other cameras in the system can be called up only when there is some type of anomalous activity being detected.