AVSS 2009 -- Special Sessions

Papers are solicited for the following special sessions to be held during AVSS 2009. Note that paper submission and review schedule for special session papers is the same as for regular papers.

To submit a paper to a special session:

• Select one of the 6 tracks from the conference submission server
  
  
• Send an email to special@avss09.org indicating in the title which special session you are submitting to and in the body of the email Submission number, Title, and Authors of the paper.

The special session organizers will be responsible for obtaining three reviews for each paper and make recommendations on the papers to the programme co-chairs based on the review reports. The programme co-chairs will take the final decision on the papers.

Recent research on automatic surveillance systems is focusing on the development of languages, methodologies, and tools to represent and manage domain context and knowledge in conjunction with the observational data, in a robust approach to information fusion. In addition, new surveillance systems often involve human-generated observational data along with those from electronic sensing devices. Human-generated data are today being called "soft" data and so new fusion processes are required to combine the soft human and "hard" electronically-generated data. For advancements along both of these lines, achieving such capabilities will require overcoming challenges involving new process design strategies as well as either significantly-modified or entirely new fusion algorithms and operations. The motivation for striving for such capability is to instill some form of intelligence into modern-day systems, in order to improve the automatic recognition of the entities and their actions and interactions in the observed environment, to achieve much better situational awareness, and especially to recognize possible threats or dangerous conditions. Generally, these systems have to operate in crowded and complex environments where anomalous events have to be distinguished from the normal course of actions. The complexity of the scenarios in which automatic surveillance systems of the next generation will have to operate requires an extension of the human role beyond passive monitor or partial controller to a dynamic control agent that can provide updated contextual information about the observed environment. Thus, the human user can also be the source that provides knowledge to the fusion system in an adaptive way. This session will address fundamental challenges for data fusion methods in order to provide fusion processes that have an enriched information and knowledge foundation well beyond drawing inferences largely from traditional electronically-based observational data. Topics of interest include approaches and methods for:

Video surveillance systems have become ubiquitous due to concerns about terrorism and criminal activity. They are deployed in many public areas such as airports, train stations, banks, businesses, office buildings, as well as city streets. However, the increased use of video surveillance systems raises serious privacy concerns. Individual citizens as well as advocacy groups believe that the accumulation of private information about people by the surveillance systems owners could be used in unwanted ways. Recent advances in biometrics technologies have increased the amount of private information that can be extracted from surveillance video. Thus, there should be a balance between the need for public safety and security and the right to privacy of individuals. Next generation video surveillance systems should have privacy protection capabilities in order to be able to offer the safety and security they are intended for, while safeguarding private information. The special session on Privacy Protected Surveillance to be held in Genoa during the 2009 6^th IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal Based Surveillance (AVSS’09), is a dedicated session that aims to foster closer relations between researchers, providing an excellent opportunity for them to meet and discuss their ideas on privacy protected surveillance. Papers are solicited in the general area of privacy protected surveillance. Specific topics include, but are not limited to:

Metropolitan areas with millions of citizens, complex networks of rail and road networks, dense commercial properties and critical power, water and communication infrastructures pose a major challenge to public safety professions. Ensuring safety and security, providing emergency and operational services in urban areas involves dealing with challenges ranging from terrorism, to every day crime, traffic congestion and effective public services. Of the many technologies that support public safety professionals, video, audio and sensor based surveillance plays a critical role. This special session will bring together two distinct communities of professionals, the public safety professionals who implement and operate surveillance systems and technologists who invent, develop, architect and supply surveillance technologies. The session will provide a forum for a rich exchange of ideas between public safety practitioners and the technologists. This is an invitation for papers in the general area of urban surveillance challenges, technologies and practices with a special focus on the following in topics: