Automated Knowledge Generation with Persistent Video Surveillance

The Air Force has increasingly invested in persistent surveillance platforms gathering a large amount of surveillance video. Ordinarily, intelligence analysts watch the video to determine if suspicious activities are occurring which is a time and manpower intensive process. Instead, this thesis proposes using tracks generated from persistent video, and building a model to detect events (a suspicious surveillance activity known as a casing event). To test our model we used Global Positioning System (GPS) tracks generated from vehicles driving in an urban area. The results show that over 400 vehicles can be monitored simultaneously in real-time and casing events are detected with high probability. In addition, persistent surveillance video is used to construct a social network from vehicle tracks based on the interactions of those tracks. Social networks that are constructed give us further information about the suspicious actors agged by the casing event detector by telling us who the suspicious actor has interacted with and what buildings they have visited. The end result is a process that automatically generates information from persistent surveillance video providing additional knowledge and understanding to intelligence analysts about terrorist activities.

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