Video Analysis for Ambient intelligence in Urban Environments

Ambient Intelligence (AmI) is an emerging field of research that comprises new paradigms, techniques and systems for intelligent processing of distributed sensing. A challenging arena for AmI framework is represented by urban environments that are characterized by high complexity, numerous sources of data,and spreading of interesting and non-trivial applications. In this context, the project LAICA (Laboratory of Ambient Intelligence for a friendly city) represents a real experiment of the usefulness of AmI for advanced services to citizens. This chapter will address solutions of video analysis that can be directly applied in urban AmI. It describes in details the uniqueness of LAICA approach, focusing in particular on the use of computer vision techniques for monitoring public parks. People surveillanceand web-based video broadcasting will be taken into account.