Next-generation 3D visualization for visual surveillance

Existing visual surveillance systems typically require that human operators observe video streams from different cameras, which becomes infeasible if the number of observed cameras is ever increasing. In this paper, we present a new surveillance system that combines automatic video analysis (i.e., single person tracking and crowd analysis) and interactive visualization. Our novel visualization takes advantage of a high resolution display and given 3D information to focus the operator's attention to interesting/ critical areas of the observed area. This is realized by embedding the results of automatic scene analysis techniques into the visualization. By providing different visualization modes, the user can easily switch between the different modes and can select the mode which provides most information. The system is demonstrated for a real setup on a university campus.