1.2 Applications

The increasing demand for security from society leads to a growing need for surveil-lance activities in many environments. Recently, the demand for remote monitoring for safety and security purposes has received particular attention, especially in the following areas:

• Transport applications such as airports [ ^[14], ^[15]], maritime environments [ ^[16], ^[17]], railways, underground [ ^[12], ^[13], ^{[18] [19] [20]}], and motorways to survey traffic [ ^{[21] [22] [23] [24] [25]}].

• Public places such as banks, supermarkets, department stores [ ^{[26] [27] [28] [29] [30] [31]}] and parking lots [ ^{[32] [33] [34]}].

• Remote surveillance of human activities such as attendance at football matches [ ^[35]] or other activities [ ^{[36] [37] [38]}].

• Surveillance to obtain certain quality control in many industrial processes, surveillance in forensic applications [ ^[39]] and remote surveillance in military applications.

Recent events, including major terrorist attacks, have led to the increase in demand for security in society. This in turn has forced governments to make personal and asset security a priority in their policies. This has resulted in the deployment of large CCTV systems. For example, London Underground and Heathrow Airport have more than 5000 cameras each. To handle this large amount of information, issues such as scalability and usability (how information needs to be given to the right people at the right time) become very important. To cope with this growing demand, research and development has been continuously carried out...