Closed Circuit Television Operators Research Articles

Patterns of saliency and semantic features distinguish gaze of expert and novice viewers of surveillance footage

When viewing the actions of others, we not only see patterns of body movements, but we also "see" the intentions and social relations of people. Experienced forensic examiners – Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators – have been shown to convey superior performance in identifying and predicting hostile intentions from surveillance footage than novices. However, it remains largely unknown what visual content CCTV operators actively attend to, and whether CCTV operators develop different strategies for active information seeking from what novices do. Here, we conducted computational analysis for the gaze-centered stimuli captured by experienced CCTV operators and novices' eye movements when viewing the same surveillance footage. Low-level image features were extracted by a visual saliency model, whereas object-level semantic features were extracted by a deep convolutional neural network (DCNN), AlexNet, from gaze-centered regions. We found that the looking behavior of CCTV operators differs from novices by actively attending to visual contents with different patterns of saliency and semantic features. Expertise in selectively utilizing informative features at different levels of visual hierarchy may play an important role in facilitating the efficient detection of social relationships between agents and the prediction of harmful intentions.

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) Based Security System in Realizing Electronic Government in Makassar City

The current trend of using technology in public organizations must be addressed. The electronic government initiative in Indonesia was introduced through Presidential Instruction Number 6 of 2001 on April 24, 2001, concerning Telematics (Telecommunication, Media, and Informatics), which states that government officials must use telematics technology to support good governance and speed up the democratic process. This research was conducted in Makassar City. The number of people with vehicles in Makassar City, as well as staff employees or CCTV operators who work in 3 (agencies), namely the Communication and Information Service, the Transportation Service and the Makassar Big City Resort Police are huge, but due to the efficiency of time and energy, the author took The sample used non-probability sampling with an accidental sampling technique for people with the number of vehicles in Makassar City and with a purposive sampling technique for employee staff and CCTV operators from the three agencies so that 139 Respondents were obtained, where the author then distributed questionnaires to respondents directly. The research results state that the Informational Disposition states that the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) based security system in Makassar City has fulfilled the first quadrant category of the e-government initiative framework by Nour et al (2008), namely informational disposition. Transactional disposition states that respondents agree that the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)-based security system in Makassar City meets the second quadrant category of the e-government initiative framework by Nour et al. (2008), namely transactional disposition. The consultation disposition states that the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV)-based security system in Makassar City has fulfilled the third quadrant category of the e-government initiative framework by Nour et al. (2008), namely the consultation disposition. The participatory disposition states that respondents strongly agree that there is equity and that there is democratic Responsiveness, Public Accountability, efficiency/economy, and effectiveness/ quality of service in the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) based security system in Makassar City. Therefore, the Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) based security system in Makassar City has fulfilled the fourth quadrant category of the e-government initiative framework by Nour et al. (2008), namely a participatory disposition.

Visualization techniques to support CCTV operators of smart city services

In this paper visualization techniques for modern closed circuit television (CCTV) smart city services are discussed with application to prevention of threats. Unconventional approaches to the intelligent visual data processing are proposed in order to support video surveillance operators, thus to make their work less exhaustive and more effective. Although registration of a huge amount of video data requires development of intelligent and automatic signal processing information extraction techniques, improvement of visualization methods for operators is also a very important task, because of the crucial role the human factor plays and should always play in the decision making, e.g. in the operator reactions to various crisis situations, which can never be fully eliminated by artificial intelligence. Four software based mechanisms connected with a standard or with a slightly extended hardware are proposed as options for the CCTV operators. They utilize rather known ideas but are implemented with new extensions to original algorithms, as well as with additional, innovative modifications and solutions (not presented in the literature). With them they become reliable and efficient tools for the CCTV systems. First, generation of cylindrical panoramas is suggested in order to make long-time video content analysis of a defined area easier and faster. Using panoramas it is possible to reduce the time that is required to watch the video by a factor of hundreds or even thousands and perform an efficient compression of the video stream for the long-time storage. Second, the controlled stereovision option is discussed for quicker and more precise extraction of relevant information from the observed scene. Third, the thermo-vision is analyzed for faultless detection of pedestrians at night. Finally, a novel high dynamic range (HDR) technique is proposed, dedicated to the CCTV systems, in contrast to other typical entertainment oriented HDR approaches, for clear visualization of important and meaningful image details, otherwise invisible. We validated usefulness of the proposed techniques with many experiments presented in this paper.

Task disengagement and implications for vigilance performance in CCTV surveillance

This research examines the relationship between behavioural indicators of task disengagement and vigilance performance for closed-circuit television (CCTV) surveillance operators and novices in a proactive real-world detection task. Seventy-three participants (42 CCTV operators and 31 novices) performed a 90-min CCTV video surveillance task based on asset protection footage in a heavy industry. The study showed a range of individualised responses in managing attention resources in order to deal with vigilance demands. Alternating fluctuations between task engagement and disengagement were found for the majority of participants, indicating efforts to manage attention resources and cope with vigilance demands. Almost a quarter of the sample disengaged during the first 30 min, but a third showed no behavioural indicators of disengagement during the task. Different results were obtained for participants with different types of work exposure (novices and operators from either `generalist' or `specialist' CCTV surveillance operations). Task disengagement was associated with lower detection rates. The implications of task engagement theory and behavioural indictors of task disengagement for the measurement and management of vigilance performance are discussed.

Experience in judging intent to harm modulates parahippocampal activity: An fMRI study with experienced CCTV operators

Does visual experience in judging intent to harm change our brain responses? And if it does, what are the mechanisms affected? We addressed these questions by studying the abilities of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) operators, who must identify the presence of hostile intentions using only visual cues in complex scenes. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging to assess which brain processes are modulated by CCTV experience. To this end we scanned 15 CCTV operators and 15 age and gender matched novices while they watched CCTV videos of 16 sec, and asked them to report whether each clip would end in violence or not. We carried out four separate whole-brain analyses including 3 model-based analyses and one analysis of intersubject correlation to examine differences between the two groups. The three model analyses were based on 1) experimentally pre-defined clip activity labels of fight, confrontation, playful, and neutral behaviour, 2) participants' reports of violent outcomes during the scan, and 3) visual saliency within each clip, as pre-assessed using eye-tracking. The analyses identified greater activation in the right superior frontal gyrus for operators than novices when viewing playful behaviour, and reduced activity for operators in comparison with novices in the occipital and temporal regions, irrespective of the type of clips viewed. However, in the parahippocampal gyrus, all three model-based analyses consistently showed reduced activity for experienced CCTV operators. Activity in the anterior part of the parahippocampal gyrus (uncus) was found to increase with years of CCTV experience. The intersubject correlation analysis revealed a further effect of experience, with CCTV operators showing correlated activity in fewer brain regions (superior and middle temporal gyrus, inferior parietal lobule and the ventral striatum) than novices. Our results indicate that long visual experience in action observation, aimed to predict harmful behaviour, modulates brain mechanisms of intent recognition.

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.

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.

Regulating Big Brother: The UK Approach

Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) is generally used in public spaces as one of a number of tools of crime prevention and detection, and has been more recently explicitly referred to as an important domestic defence against terrorist activity. The success of such schemes is mixed and appears to be context specific rather than acting as a more general 'silver bullet' in crime prevention. Nevertheless, its apparent success in, for example, aiding the detection of those responsible for the London subway bombings in 2005 has provided ample evidence for those who advocate the further spread of this surveillance technology. The New York Times has reported recently that three thousand surveillance cameras would be in place in New York by 2008 with the possibility of utilising facial recognition technology. Whilst the argument commonly heard is that if one has nothing to hide one has nothing to fear, it is more appropriate that the state is able to both justify its use of such wide spread surveillance and put in place a transparent form of video surveillance regulation that ensures public confidence in a system with the potential to collect personal data on a huge scale and thereby impinge on individual privacy. The United Kingdom, which is considered by many to be the home of widespread public space video surveillance, has a regulatory system governing the collection and storage of data obtained by CCTV surveillance. This paper outlines the requirements of the legislation in theory before reporting the results of a survey into the adherence to the legislation in practice. It illustrates that the majority of the respondents were ignorant of the requirements of this complex legislation and as a result were potentially breaching individual rights as well as compromising the gathering of strong evidence. In many respects CCTV operators were also ignorant as to what an ethical approach to such surveillance might include. It is suggested that in its current form UK regulation is working in theory but not practice and this raises the question whether such a regime concentrating on data protection is appropriate in other jurisdictions.

Exploring Relations between Watchers and Watched in Control(led) Systems: Strategies and Tactics

Using ethnographic observation within a number of Closed Circuit Television (CCTV) control rooms as evidence, this paper documents the apparently trivial but subjectively meaningful types of technologically mediated interaction taking place between CCTV operators and those watched. It examines the operators' interpretations of the various incidents, individuals and social realities observed. In so doing, the author suggests a number of interesting social-phenomenological processes are occurring. These include: the formation and existence of disembodied relationships between watchers and watched across distanciated CCTV surveillance networks; an operator gaze incorporating care, control and creativity; the existence of hermeneutical narrative constructions among the operators. The latter practice can be empirically demonstrated through the operators' creation of 'celebrity characters', their attribution of pseudo-identities for cameo 'guest stars' and their playful characterisation of the framed action taking place in the spaces under observation. It is argued that such informal tactics, employed to both entertain and relieve pressure, are the unintended outcome of systemic strategies of control designed to induce conformity. They allow the operators to make sense of, bring meaning to and cope with relentless, often disjointed, imagery and with the emotional strain of the CCTV workplace culture. The paper also suggests that tactics are not limited to the watchers. The watched or Stars of CCTV appear to employ methods in a similar bid to manoeuvre themselves around the cameras. By considering the practices of watchers and watched, it is argued more generally that CCTV technology is a social medium, the people, places and objects watched functioning not simply as passive 'objects of information', but also as active 'subjects of communication'.

Targeting the Unwanted: Video Surveillance and Categorical Exclusion in Oslo, Norway

The rise of video surveillance in the United Kingdom, in the form of the public installation of closed circuit television (CCTV), has been seen by several scholars as a contributing factor to the increasing exclusion of unwanted categories of people from city centers, a development often referred to as the 'commercialization' or 'purification' of the city. Drawing from field observations over three years in control rooms in Oslo, Norway, this article discusses whether CCTV systems in Oslo contribute to a similar process of exclusion. To do so, I compare the open street video surveillance system with two other CCTV systems - a shopping mall and a major transport center. The introduction of open street CCTV in Oslo in 1999 did not create social exclusion, but recent developments show the possibility remains. Although drug addicts and young people were the primary targets of surveillance in all three sites studied, ejections varied considerably from site to site. The shopping mall system had a higher ejection rate than the open street system, and was therefore the system with the clearest exclusionary effects. Reasons for the different ejection rates are discussed, in particular the social structure of the site under surveillance and the organizational relationships of CCTV operators to the policing agents connected to the surveillance system.