Video Surveillance Lab

NUST-PNEC (Video Analytics Lab) and FAST-NU (Smart Video Surveillance Lab) have been advised by PC/HEC technical review board to adapt Defense and Civilian applications of Video Surveillance respectively while both institutes remain in lead capacity (i.e. each chapter lab have its own PI). Subsequently, once approved, budget will be distributed amongst both chapter labs of video surveillance theme as shown against each:

The group at FAST-NU will focus on the following civilian application domains:

(i) Smart video surveillance system for citizens:

Smart surveillance is a unique feature of the video surveillance lab. We are motivated to address the growing need of implementing a viable and effective surveillance system. The system is aimed to address the needs of providing security to citizens of the Pakistan. A large cloud-based solution is needed in order to meet the challenges of storage and processing.  Video surveillance systems are used for monitoring the behavior of suspicious activities in banks, buildings, roads and so on. Camera units in these systems are often connected to storage systems, IP networks, or close circuit monitors centrally monitored by security personals or law enforcement experts.

Our research focuses on the coordinated knowledge-based actions based on information extracted from different real-time feeds. The research will be implemented in two planes: i) knowledge plane provide centralized control and ii) inter-device communication used for coordination among devices. The independent and coordination operations of these planes will predict the future operation of devices and feed capture. Combining global and local interactions between devices provides a platform for surveillance of complex scenarios. Hence, device-to-device communications among heterogeneous devices are used for collecting data about the suspicious activity.

(ii) Suspicious Activity and Evidence Detection using Smart IoT Systems:

Identifying suspicious human behavior and futuristic robot operations are key requirements in smart surveillance systems for taking appropriate countermeasures. In this regard, data from heterogeneous sources, such as camera units, sensors, mobile devices, and IoTs, is collected as real-time feeds and analyzed to detect suspicious activities and misbehavior.

While focusing on military domain, once the software solution is developed and optimized at NUST-PNEC, it will mainly involve customization of the software during installation at other proposed sites and subsequent maintenance services. The networking and associated hardware in C&CC are required to be operational. The proposed smart surveillance product is expected to have a good potential to be commercialized. The project can be offered to military, government and national private sector companies at subsidized rates with no licensing issues etc.