A Distributed Surveillance System to Improve Personal Security in Public Transport

This paper presents a distributed surveillance system to improve safety andsecurity in public transport environments such as metropolitan railways,airports etc. The system is constructed by a set of modules that provideadditional intelligence to detect potentially dangerous situations and providemore timely prevention and management of events. These modules includeCCTV video processing, audio detection, mobile smart cards, a range of otherpossible sensors and a supervisory front-end. The system design uses ideasfrom control engineering and distributed network communication resulting in aCORBA based architecture and XML messaging. The system components havebeen implemented and integrated in two major successful trials in metropolitanrailway stations (London and Paris) and at Newcastle International Airport, aspart of a major EU-funded project PRISMATICA (?PRo-active Integratedsystems for Security Management by Technological, Institutional andCommunication Assistance?).