A profile of MPEG-7 for visual surveillance

This paper builds on previous work to propose a meta-data standard for video surveillance. The motivation is to promote interoperability. The starting point is the set of requirements under consideration for a Multimedia Application Format. These requirements cover a description of the surveillance system and of the activity in the scene. In addition to this set, appropriate descriptions for the relation between camera and scene are also considered. To improve interoperability between systems and between components of a system, two types of restrictions are proposed. The first proposal is a restricted subset of the MPEG-7 elements that are applicable to the surveillance domain. The second proposal is to use the MPEG-7 tools to include domain-specific taxonomies to restrict the names of elements used in the semantic descriptions. Both proposals are incorporated into examples which demonstrate the use of the standard.