Like airports, municipal mass transit systems are on constant lookout for suspicious individuals. After the London tube and
bus bombings in July 2005, recorded surveillance video allowed authorities to identify the
perpetrators behind the attacks.
But transit officials these days are primarily interested in defusing terrorist assaults
before they can happen. When officials in
Stockholm, Sweden, began planning video
surveillance technology for the city's mass
transit system, they knew from the outset
that they wanted an automated and integrated system that could analyze video in
real time.
"We will equip 100 of our tube stations with
cameras, 14 of our commuter train lines, and
all 2000 of our buses," says Henrik Virro, project manager for Stockholm Lokaltrafik, the
city's mass transit agency. The 6000-camera
system, which is scheduled for deployment
later this year, will send video signals to
servers for instantaneous processing by Visual Defence's software.
The new video analytics system, for starters,
will help Lokaltrafik reduce vandalism on its tracks. The system is designed to generate an
alarm the instant it detects someone on the
tracks. A central console provides operators
with pre-programmed workflow instructions
for responding to alarms.
"In Stockholm, we're doing video analytics
specifically to detect people on the track,"
says Michael Godfrey, Visual Defence's CTO.
"But, just as simply, it can detect things like
graffiti, vehicles stopped in the wrong location, or, at night, people in a closed station."
"We will hopefully save a few lives as well,"
says Virro.