Improve safety using public network cameras

Surveillance cameras, also called CCTV (closed-circuit television), are widely deployed as one of the solutions to improve public safety. The visual data from these cameras are usually unavailable to the public. In recent years, many organizations have deployed network cameras with diverse purposes such as monitoring traffic congestion and observing natural scenes. The data are available to anyone connected to the Internet, without any password. Although the cameras are not deployed for surveillance purposes, the cameras can be utilized to increase public safety by properly integrating to current surveillance systems. Suspicious activities may be monitored in real-time and coverage can be increased along with CCTVs deployed by law enforcement. Integrating public cameras into a surveillance system has many challenges such as inaccurate locations, diverse sources, and different methods to access the visual data. This paper presents how to discover public cameras from heterogeneous sources and find the accurate locations and orientations of the cameras. We propose a proof-of-concept system to improve public safety by integrating public cameras into our previous visualization tool.