Closed-circuit Television Monitoring Research Articles

UNCANNY ACTIVITY DETECTION USING CCTV MONITORING

"Uncanny Activity Detection Using CCTV Monitoring" introduces an innovative approach to support public safety through the integration of Machine Learning (ML) in real-time monitoring. In the contemporary world, Closed-Circuit Television (CCTV) surveillance stands as a fundamental and highly effective security measure for various premises, including hospitals, malls, and universities. It serves as a widely recognized tool for preventing and detecting unwanted activities. However, envisioning an public space equipped with several CCTV cameras across multiple buildings presents a logistical challenge. The manual monitoring of events across this expansive network is practically impossible. Furthermore, searching for a specific event in recorded video footage, even after it has occurred, proves to be a time-consuming endeavor. This project addresses the need for an efficient solution to manage and analyze extensive CCTV footage in complex environments, optimizing security practices and response times. Keywords: Anomaly Detection, Deep Learning, Human Behavior Recognition.

Cross-sectional survey of staff and family perspectives on the use of CCTV in Australian residential aged care.

To describe staff and family members' opinions about closed-circuit television (CCTV) in communal and private areas of residential aged care facilities (RACF), and to investigate how this relates to perceptions of care quality. A cross-sectional survey was developed to capture perceptions of CCTV's influence on care quality, and acceptable locations for CCTV placement. Data were recorded as ordinal-scale and open responses. Non-parametric tests of association were conducted. The survey was completed by 81 staff and 74 family members. Both staff and family were satisfied with care quality and safety, irrespective of CCTV use. More family members were in favour of CCTV in both public and private areas, compared to staff who favoured public areas. Staff and family assumed there was real-time monitoring, leading to a belief that CCTV monitoring would improve safety and prevent falls and abuse. Concerns were raised that CCTV could be used instead of improving staff-to-resident ratios and interaction. Overall, participants supported the use of CCTV more in public than in private areas and believed it reveals and prevents poor care. There was no association between CCTV use and satisfaction with care. Closed-circuit television can have positive impacts if all stakeholders are involved in implementation.

Child Detection Model Using YOLOv5

Closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance systems have been installed in public locations to search for missingchildren and fight crime. The Penang City Council has deployed a face recognition CCTV monitoring system. As a result, this research aims to identify children who were in the wrong area or at the wrong time and then notify authorities such as police and parents. According to child detection research, the average child loss rate is more significant due to lacking child detection features. Existing research employs machine learning and deep learning across several platforms, yielding inaccurate accuracy findings. Using the YOLOv5 algorithm, this study will categorize images based on children's detection in restricted locations. Coco, Coco128, and Pascal VOC were chosen because they are the standard datasets of YOLOv5 and the public dataset INRIA Person. Annotations and augmentation techniques are employed in the pre-processing phase to acquire labeling in text file format and offer data for any object position. The YOLOv5s model will then be designed to make the proposed detector model. After training using YOLOv5s, a child detector model is produced and evaluated on the dataset to acquire findings according to recall, precision, and mean average precision (mAP) performance metrics. Finally, the performance metrics obtained from all four datasets are compared. The INRIA Person dataset performed the best, with a recall of 0.995, an accuracy of 0.998, and a mean Average Accuracy of 0.995. Nevertheless, the findings for both YOLOv5s and the proposed model are pretty close. This demonstrates that the proposed model can detect as well as the YOLOv5s model.

REGULATION OF THE USE OF CCTV AS A CRIME PREVENTION TECHNIQUE

Having been used for a number of years as part of the security apparatus of banks and stores, closed circuit television (CCTV) is increasingly becoming more prevalent on the streets of South Africa. CCTV monitoring takes place in a number of cities, including Johannesburg, Durban, Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Pietermaritzburg. (My own interest in this matter derives from my involvement in the Justice Monitoring Project (JUMP), the brainchild of Prof Michael Cowling, which tasked students in 2004 to inter alia monitor theuse of CCTV evidence obtained from the camera network which is run as a joint venture of the South African Police Service (SAPS) and Business Against Crime in Pietermaritzburg.) Whilst it has been argued that CCTV cameras can make a meaningful contribution to enhancing the safety of our city streets, the question arises: at what cost? This paper seeks to examine this question in the context of a discussion of the use of CCTV as a law enforcement technique. The focus of the note will be on data collection rather than data collation, and the issue of admissibility of video evidence will not be dealt with. CCTV may be briefly described as a television system wherein signals are not publicly distributed and images are not broadcast. Instead, such images are transmitted from cameras to particular monitors serving a limited area. In the context of cameras located within a city, the images transmitted are primarily of pedestrians walking or transacting on the streets. As Froomkin has noted, whilst moving about in public is not truly anonymous, one at least enjoys the idea, largely consonant with reality in a city environment, of being able to move about with anonymity. This freedom is naturally threatened by privacy-destroying technology such as CCTV. It is evident that the use of such technology involves trying to balance the competing values of safety and privacy. As more cities make use of video surveillance, it appears as if privacy is on the losing side. Whilst this trend is understandable given the standard contradistinction between the tangible harms inherent in security concerns as opposed to the intangible harms occasioned by infringement on privacy, whether it is justifiable is another matter altogether. Spencer has raised a number of concerns about the tangible/intangible division as a framework for decision-making, namely (i) that the framework is incomplete and locks into short-term benefits and consequences rather than taking account of the long-term effects on privacy; (ii) that by embedding the decision in a concrete factual context the decision will inevitably be weighted in favour of preventing tangible harms; and (iii) that the tangible/intangible dichotomy is not as clear-cut as it may seem, since security proposals often serve intangible goals such as allaying fear, whilst privacy intrusions can have tangible consequences such as disrupting or inhibiting behaviour.

The long-term impact of immediate verbal feedback of hand hygiene compliance after overt observation sessions, as assessed by continuous closed-circuit television monitoring in an intensive care setting

BackgroundHand hygiene compliance by health care workers (HCWs) is pivotal in controlling and preventing health care associated infections. The aim of this interventional study is to assess the long-term impact of personal verbal feedback on hand hygiene compliance of HCWs in an intensive care unit (ICU) immediately after overt observation by an infection control nurse.MethodsAn infection control nurse overtly observed HCWs’ hand hygiene compliance and immediately gave personal verbal feedback with emphasis on aseptic technique. Overt non-interventional sessions were also performed. We measured compliance rates using covert continuous closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring. We compared these rates to previously-published hand hygiene compliance data.ResultsOverall compliance rates in the first (41.5%) and third phases (42%) of the study, before and after the intervention were similar. The two moments that were lowest in the first phase, “before aseptic contact” and “after exposure to body fluids”, showed significant improvement, but two moments showed a significant decline in compliance: “before patient contact” and “after contact with patient surrounding”. The compliance rates during the intervention phase were 64.8% and 63.8% during the sessions with and without immediate verbal personal feedback, respectively.ConclusionThe overall hand hygiene compliance rate of HCWs did not show an improvement after immediate verbal personal feedback. Covert CCTV observational sessions yielded much lower hand hygiene compliance rates then overt interventional and non-interventional observations. We suggest that a single intervention of personal feedback immediately after an observational session is an ineffective strategy to change habitual practices.

Effectiveness of CCTV systems as a crime preventive tool: evidence from eight Polish cities

ABSTRACT Based on data from eight Polish cities, we tested if closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring systems are effective in crime reduction and if the CCTV monitoring effects are durable. In a quasi-experimental method, we applied police data about four types of crime incidents in 2005–2014 as well as camera location. A preventive effect appeared in 10 of 17 of analysed paired treatment/comparison areas. The overall mean effect appears modest. In two of four cases, the preventive effects were durable. The analysis proves that CCTV cameras in the Polish cities had a crime reduction effect and the effect is sensitive for the category of crime. The influence of CCTV on the fall in crime in Poland is unlikely.

Nosocomial Outbreak of COVID-19 in a Hematologic Ward.

BackgroundCoronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) outbreaks occur in hospitals in many parts of the world. In hospital settings, the possibility of airborne transmission needs to be investigated thoroughly.Materials and MethodsThere was a nosocomial outbreak of COVID-19 in a hematologic ward in a tertiary hospital, Seoul, Korea. We found 11 patients and guardians with COVID-19 through vigorous contact tracing and closed-circuit television monitoring. We found one patient who probably had acquired COVID-19 through airborne-transmission. We performed airflow investigation with simulation software, whole-genome sequencing of severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2).ResultsOf the nine individuals with COVID-19 who had been in the hematologic ward, six stayed in one multi-patient room (Room 36), and other three stayed in different rooms (Room 1, 34, 35). Guardian in room 35 was close contact to cases in room 36, and patient in room 34 used the shared bathroom for teeth brushing 40 minutes after index used. Airflow simulation revealed that air was spread from the bathroom to the adjacent room 1 while patient in room 1 did not used the shared bathroom. Airflow was associated with poor ventilation in shared bathroom due to dysfunctioning air-exhaust, grill on the door of shared bathroom and the unintended negative pressure of adjacent room.ConclusionTransmission of SARS-CoV-2 in the hematologic ward occurred rapidly in the multi-patient room and shared bathroom settings. In addition, there was a case of possible airborne transmission due to unexpected airflow.

Using the deep neural networks for normal and abnormal situation recognition in the automatic access monitoring and control system of vehicles

A new mathematical model of the intelligent access monitoring and control system based on the cybernetic approach is proposed for solving the problems of vehicle access to the territory of an organization. The distinctive feature of the mathematical model is the ability to take into account and recognize normal and abnormal situations at the protected object and develop control actions. To localize vehicles and recognize their license plates, the composition of traditional methods of image processing and two-pass classification performed by the developed modified architecture of convolutional neural network MobileNet is offered. The composition allows to define additional identification features of the object. The proposed adaptations allow to recognize the situation in real time with low computational costs and high accuracy. The natural experiment has shown that the integration of the modern hardware means and algorithms of object detection and recognition, even in the rough conditions of street closed-circuit television monitoring, provides not less than 96% accuracy, and the processing time of one frame is not more than 0.094 s based on the Nvidia GeForce 1080Ti graphic processor. High recognition accuracy without loss of speed in the real-time mode is achieved by integrating the modern hardware means and the algorithms of object detection and recognition. The program module in Python using the Tensorflow and Keras library is developed for carrying out the access control functions.

A prospective cohort study on closed-circuit television monitoring and direct observation for hand hygiene compliance in a pediatric intensive care unit

Background: Intensive care patients are at risk for healthcare-associated infections (HCAIs), and hand hygiene (HH) compliance in health-care workers (HCWs) is reportedly low. This study aimed to compare closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring to direct observation on the HH compliance and its impact on HCAIs. Methods: In a prospective cohort study, HCWs were observed for HH compliance and HCAIs were studied. The study period was August 1, 2014–December 31, 2014 (direct observation period), and March 1, 2015–July 31, 2015 (CCTV monitoring period), with 2 months washout period. A HH education module (running a video daily, reinforcement of HH everyday evening, 2-weekly classes about HH importance, and posters reinforcing the importance of HH on the prominent sites of pediatric intensive care unit) was implemented in both periods. Each day was divided into blocks of 6-h. One hour from each block was randomly selected stratified by day and night shifts. HH compliance was observed according to the World Health Organization, “My Five Moments of HH.” Results: A total of 751 patients (direct observation period n = 369, CCTV monitoring period n = 382) were admitted. The HH compliance rate was higher in the CCTV monitoring period (56.6%, n = 5953 / 10519) as compared to that of the direct observation period (36.1%, n = 2178 / 6028) (relative risk = 1.57, 95% confidence interval: 1.51 - 1.63, P ≤ 0.001). Ventilator-associated pneumonia (4.7 vs. 12 / 1000 ventilation-day) and central line-associated bloodstream infection (1.9 vs. 6.6 / 1000 central line-day) were lower in the CCTV monitoring period. There was no difference in mortality between the study periods (18.3%, n = 70 / 382 vs. 21.1%, n = 78 / 369, relative risk = 0.87, 95% confidence interval: 0.65–1.16, P = 0.333). Conclusion: CCTV monitoring was associated with improved HH compliance, which was associated with lower HCAIs.

Marine Vessel Re-Identification: A Large-Scale Dataset and Global-and-Local Fusion-Based Discriminative Feature Learning

A marine vessel re-identification system has to determine whether or not different images represent the same vessel. Accurate vessel re-identification improves onshore closed-circuit television monitoring in a vessel traffic services system as well as onboard surveillance of surrounding vessels. However, because ships are rigid bodies and the marine environment is harsh, the accurate re-identification of vessels at sea can be very difficult. We describe a marine vessel-re-identification framework, Global-and-Local Fusion-based Multi-view Feature Learning (GLF-MVFL), which is based on a combination of global and fine-grained local features. GLF-MVFL combines cross-entropy loss with our newly-developed orientation-guided quintuplet loss. We exploit intrinsic features of marine vessels to optimize multi-view representation learning for re-identification. GLF-MVFL uses ResNet-50 as the backbone network to extract features for simultaneous quintuple input. It detects and discriminates between features and estimates viewpoints to form a comprehensive re-identification framework. We created an annotated large-scale vessel retrieval dataset, VesselID-539, which contains images from viewpoints similar to those of an autonomous surface vessel, to use in evaluating the performance of the model. Extensive experiments and analysis of the results obtained from using VesselID-539 demonstrate that our approach significantly increases the accuracy of vessel re-identification and is more effective and robust for images from different viewpoints than other approaches.

Efficacy of covert closed-circuit television monitoring of the hand hygiene compliance of health care workers caring for patients infected with multidrug-resistant organisms in an intensive care unit

To compare covert closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring to standard overt observation in assessing the hand hygiene (HH) conduct of health care workers (HCWs) caring for patients infected with multidrug-resistant organisms (MDROs). This was a cross-sectional study in a general intensive care unit of a 1,000-bed university hospital. Forty-six general intensive care unit HCWs (staff physicians, registered nurses, and auxiliary workers) caring for contact isolation MDRO-infected patients. The study incorporated the following 3 phases: phase 1, establishment of interrater reliability between 2 simultaneous observers using the overt observation method; phase 2, establishment of interrater reliability between 2 simultaneous observers using the CCTV method; and phase 3, simultaneous monitoring of HH by both methods to evaluate the suitability of CCTV as an alternative to direct observation of the HH conduct of HCWs caring for MDRO-infected patients. Overall, 1,104 opportunities to perform HH were documented during 49 observation sessions. The compliance rate observed by the overt method (37.3%) was significantly higher than that observed when only the covert method was used (26.5%). However, simultaneous overt-covert observations were found to have intraclass correlation coefficients of >0.85. Covert CCTV observation of HCW HH compliance appears to provide a truer and more realistic picture than overt observation, probably because of its ability to neutralize the Hawthorne effect of overt observation. The high intraclass correlation coefficients between covert observation and overt observation supports this conclusion.

Anxious individuals predict the onset of aggression earlier in a CCTV surveillance task.

Attentional biases in anxious individuals can facilitate the detection of threatening stimuli. A particular field of research that may benefit from enhanced threat detection is in closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance, in which operators search through multiple camera feeds to attempt to identify threatening situations before they occur. The present study examined whether the enhanced threat detection of anxious individuals extends to the ability to detect threat in a multiple-scene CCTV task. Anxiety was measured in a nonclinical sample using the State-Trait Inventory for Cognitive and Somatic Anxiety. Participants were asked to try to find aggressive incidents that were simulated using the game Grand Theft Auto V in displays showing 1, 4, or 9 simultaneous videos. The results revealed that higher levels of trait cognitive, state cognitive, and trait somatic anxiety were related to earlier responses, with no change in confidence or accuracy. Increasing the number of screens to be monitored was associated with detecting the events later and a reduced confidence in responses. These results suggest that, in nonclinical populations, a moderate degree of anxiety may be beneficial in predicting acts of aggression during CCTV monitoring tasks. Trait (i.e., stable) levels of anxiety may inform recruitment of operators for surveillance tasks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Convolutional Models for the Detection of Firearms in Surveillance Videos

Closed-circuit television monitoring systems used for surveillance do not provide an immediate response in situations of danger such as armed robbery. In addition, they have multiple limitations when human operators perform the monitoring. For these reasons, a firearms detection system was developed using a new large database that was created from images extracted from surveillance videos of situations in which there are people with firearms. The system is made up of two parts—the “Front End” and “Back End”. The Front End is comprised of the YOLO object detection and localization system, and the Back End is made up of the firearms detection model that is developed in this work. These two systems are used to focus the detection system only in areas of the image where there are people, disregarding all other irrelevant areas. The performance of the firearm detection system was analyzed using multiple convolutional neural network (CNN) architectures, finding values up to 86% in metrics like recall and precision in a network configuration based on VGG Net using grayscale images.

Study on Strengthening Plan of Safety Network CCTV Monitoring by Steganography and User Authentication

Recently, as the utilization of CCTV (closed circuit television) is emerging as an issue, the studies on CCTV are receiving much attention. Accordingly, due to the development of CCTV, CCTV has IP addresses and is connected to network; it is exposed to many threats on the existing web environment. In this paper, steganography is utilized to confirm the Data Masquerading and Data Modification and, in addition, to strengthen the security; the user information is protected based on PKI (public key infrastructure), SN (serial number), andR value(random number) attributed at the time of login and the user authentication protocol to block nonauthorized access of malicious user in network CCTV environment was proposed. This paper should be appropriate for utilization of user infringement-related CCTV where user information protection-related technology is not applied for CCTV in the future.

Pirate Stealth or Inattentional Blindness? The Effects of Target Relevance and Sustained Attention on Security Monitoring for Experienced and Naïve Operators

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators are responsible for maintaining security in various applied settings. However, research has largely ignored human factors that may contribute to CCTV operator error. One important source of error is inattentional blindness – the failure to detect unexpected but clearly visible stimuli when attending to a scene. We compared inattentional blindness rates for experienced (84 infantry personnel) and naïve (87 civilians) operators in a CCTV monitoring task. The task-relevance of the unexpected stimulus and the length of the monitoring period were manipulated between participants. Inattentional blindness rates were measured using typical post-event questionnaires, and participants' real-time descriptions of the monitored event. Based on the post-event measure, 66% of the participants failed to detect salient, ongoing stimuli appearing in the spatial field of their attentional focus. The unexpected task-irrelevant stimulus was significantly more likely to go undetected (79%) than the unexpected task-relevant stimulus (55%). Prior task experience did not inoculate operators against inattentional blindness effects. Participants' real-time descriptions revealed similar patterns, ruling out inattentional amnesia accounts.

Suicide prevention in correctional facilities: Reflections and next steps

Data from a recent national study of inmate suicides indicates that the suicide rate in county jails throughout the United States has steadily decreased. Despite this progress, the author argues that rather than developing and maintaining comprehensive policies and practices, policymakers and correctional administrators appear preoccupied with the notion that suicides can only be prevented when inmates are on suicide precautions. Measures such as closed-circuit television monitoring, suicide-resistant jail cells, safety smocks, and new technology are popular tools to keep certain inmates safe. There is more to suicide prevention than simply observing suicidal inmates and waiting for them to attempt suicide. The author argues that suicides are prevented and suicide rates reduced when correctional facilities provide a comprehensive array of programming that identifies suicidal inmates who are otherwise difficult to identify, ensures their safety on suicide precautions, and provides a continuity of care throughout confinement.

Acutely induced anxiety increases negative interpretations of events in a closed-circuit television monitoring task

In two experiments we measured the effects of 7.5% CO2 inhalation on the interpretation of video footage recorded on closed circuit television (CCTV). As predicted, inhalation of 7.5% CO2 was associated with increases in physiological and subjective correlates of anxiety compared with inhalation of medical air (placebo). Importantly, when in the 7.5% CO2 condition, participants reported the increased presence of suspicious activity compared with placebo (Experiment 1), a finding that was replicated and extended (Experiment 2) with no concomitant increase in the reporting of the presence of positive activity. These findings support previous work on interpretative bias in anxiety but are novel in terms of how the anxiety was elicited, the nature of the interpretative bias, and the ecological validity of the task.

Suspiciousness perception in dynamic scenes: a comparison of CCTV operators and novices

Perception of scenes has typically been investigated by using static or simplified visual displays. How attention is used to perceive and evaluate dynamic, realistic scenes is more poorly understood, in part due to the problem of comparing eye fixations to moving stimuli across observers. When the task and stimulus is common across observers, consistent fixation location can indicate that that region has high goal-based relevance. Here we investigated these issues when an observer has a specific, and naturalistic, task: closed-circuit television (CCTV) monitoring. We concurrently recorded eye movements and ratings of perceived suspiciousness as different observers watched the same set of clips from real CCTV footage. Trained CCTV operators showed greater consistency in fixation location and greater consistency in suspiciousness judgements than untrained observers. Training appears to increase between-operators consistency by learning “knowing what to look for” in these scenes. We used a novel “Dynamic Area of Focus (DAF)” analysis to show that in CCTV monitoring there is a temporal relationship between eye movements and subsequent manual responses, as we have previously found for a sports video watching task. For trained CCTV operators and for untrained observers, manual responses were most highly related to between-observer eye position spread when a temporal lag was introduced between the fixation and response data. Several hundred milliseconds after between-observer eye positions became most similar, observers tended to push the joystick to indicate perceived suspiciousness. Conversely, several hundred milliseconds after between-observer eye positions became dissimilar, observers tended to rate suspiciousness as low. These data provide further support for this DAF method as an important tool for examining goal-directed fixation behavior when the stimulus is a real moving image.

Violence and surveillance in mental health wards

Abstract It is estimated that there are now over four million closed circuit television (CCTV) cameras in Britain watching our every move. The increased use of CCTV monitoring and surveillance within public areas has received much research attention, and there is now a critical body of surveillance literature on the implications of such watching within urban and street settings.

The role of an operating microscope in medico-legal practice

This article describes our experience in the use of a binocular surgical microscope at autopsy for the in situ forensic examination of various types of mechanical skin wounds. The microscopic image was visualised on a closed-circuit television monitor, and colour photographs and video recordings were simultaneously obtained from the monitor. With abrasions, small epidermal tags, which play a key role in the determination of external force direction, were clearly observed. With lacerations, crushing of the epidermis was observed at the wound margin, and continuous bridges of connective tissue and/or blood vessels were also found within the wound cavity. With incised wounds, the epidermis was intact up to the wound margin, and there was no continuous bridge within the wound cavity. Using these differences, it was, therefore, simple to distinguish lacerations from incised wounds. Ligature marks due to hanging were clearly observed, with petechial haemorrhages and minute abrasions readily seen in the lesion. For stab wounds caused by a single-edge knife, the morphological difference between the two ends of the wound caused by the sharp blade and the blunt side could be distinguished. It was also possible to confirm the identification of unknown cadavers by observing old wound scars using the operating microscope. Abnormal lesions of the blood vessels, such as a mechanical tear of the vertebral artery (the origin of a subarachnoid haemorrhage) and the atherosclerotic stenosis of the coronary artery, were detectable. In addition, the microscope was useful as a teaching aid to colleagues and medical students to study the nature of the wounds during or after the autopsy. We believe that this system presents advantages in terms of education and training of forensic pathologists and physicians as well as crime investigation officers.