A framework for distributed human tracking

Today, more than ever, monitoring and surveillance systems play an important role in many aspects of our lives. Technology plays a vital role in our efforts to create, store and analyze vast amounts of data for both security and commercial purposes. In this paper, we propose an application which combines research performed in computer networks, multimedia databases and computer vision. We consider the problem where a number of networks are interconnected. Each of the individual nodes (networks) are collecting, processing and storing data from several sensors (cameras). Specifically, we emphasize on how the data (images) are processed by the individual nodes and how the information is transmitted, so that queries involving multiple nodes can be answered. During this process, we also identify several challenges related to sharing voluminous content provided by visual surveillance devices.