1.5 Distribution, communication and system design

In Section 1.3 we considered different techniques that have been used to develop more robust and adaptive algorithms. In Section 1.4 we presented a review of different architectures of distributed surveillance systems. Although the design of some of these systems can look impressive, there are some aspects where it will be advantageous to dedicate more attention for the development of distributed surveillance systems for the next few years. These include the distribution of processing tasks, the use of new technologies as well as the creation of metadata standards or new protocols to cope with current limitations in bandwidth capacities. Other aspects that should be taken into consideration for the next generation of surveillance systems are the design of scheduling control and more robust and adaptive algorithms. A field that needs further research is that of alarm management, which is an important part of an automatic surveillance system, for example, when different priorities and goals need to be considered. For example, in Reference ^[93] the authors describe work carried out in a robotics field, where the robot is able to focus attention in a certain region of interest, extract its features and recognise objects in the region. The control part of the system allows the robot to refocus its attention in a different region of interest and skip a region of interest that already has been analysed. Another example can be found in Reference ^[18] where in the specification of the system, requirements...