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Surveillance and Image Processing

Posted by philgnorris on August 9, 2011
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As you read this, you will no doubt be thinking how topical the subject is today!  Sophisticated surveillance of public places in the UK and elsewhere in the developed world has been increasing in the face of increased terrorism threats, more rampant criminality and now social unrest. A recent report published by CCTV Image magazine suggested that there were over 1,850,000 CCTV surveillance cameras in the UK alone, both public and in private premises.  The UK leads the way by far with 1 for every 32 of the population and there have been other, perhaps more fanciful estimates, that put this figure at 1 in 14!  This has prompted a debate on the relative benefits of crime reduction balanced by loss of privacy in this home of democracy.

What seems to be in no doubt until the unfolding of the complete lawlessness this weekend in cities around Britain, was that CCTV surveillance is effective in reducing crime.  I now want to outline some the technology behind some of the surveillance in areas that the public has access to.

Gone are the days when the image is a fuzzy black and white where the operator just eyeballed the bank of images, reported what he saw and hoped he could find the video tapes when the police asked for them.  Yes this type of operation still goes on, but the image is now high-definition (HD) in full colour, even in poor light or infra-red for special purposes and night vision.  Furthermore, image acquisition and image  processing software has moved on tremendously in recent years with the coming of the digital age.

All these applications use common platform standard such  Common Vision Blox s for  3-axis image stabilisation (anti-shake), multi-image integration for clear still images and even for multi-viewpoint analysis.   This digital data can be transmitted over ethernet cabling and sharing the image via the Internet.   Automatic tracking of a target that interests a camera operator from one CCTV to the next in a group of cameras is now possible.

Infra-red images are especially useful at night for identification of heat sources such as fugitives hiding in the undergrowth and when digitised and  linked to police, DVLA and insurance databases for automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR) in dark car parks.

One of the most exciting and new aspects of manipulating digital video sequences, from a technical point of view, is the possibility of lifting of biometric data from the image sequence to give height, weight, build, facial features and, of course, clothing.  This data can be processed so that it can seek a match with known data from the CRB in real time.

The UK Highways Authority have been using their 1,500 CCTV Monitors located at key junctions, not only to monitor Traffic levels but recently, they have started using  CCTV imaging for  APNR in real time.  In future, there could even be monitoring in the infra-red spectrum to seek hot spots on cars and especially lorries for impending problems with under-inflated or burst tyres before accidents are caused.

This canter through the new technology available to security organisations demonstrates that real-time evaluation and identification of problems and targeting of ne’er-do-wells in real time automatically is already a real possibility.  It may be that automatic monitoring of criminals and terrorists will soon become a reality.

It is only a short step to that recent film about the near future (the name escapes me) where everything is monitored and “sniffer” sensors located at every underground (metro) could read DNA of all the people passing and the wanted person (the hero) was tracked all the way across the city.  It strikes me that the technology is rapidly reaching that point where passive monitoring can give an automatic GPS fix. Scary or what!

Finally, the police seem to be quite confident that a significant number of these rioters will identified from the various surveillance sources in the next few days.  Part of me says there should be plenty of imagery for the police to work on.  Indeed, some of the youngsters caught by the media on news reports looked very clear on my TV and anyone who knows them could immediately identify them.  But will they or can the police use the automated recognition tools I described to make a real difference.

Londoner Clean Sweep Protest After Riots 9 August 2011

The answer, I fear, may be not yet because of the cut backs to police numbers and the political will to really get as many of these feral youths to pay for their immorality, whatever the cost.  Let’s hope this present rioting does not continue and the real fear of arrest grows by the rising numbers being arraigned at the magistrate courts.  I am of the school that says:” if you are not breaking the law, you have nothing to fear from blanket surveillance in this modern democracy.”

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