Integrated roadmap for the rapid finding and tracking of people at large airports

This paper presents an integrated roadmap for the rapid finding and tracking of people at large airports. Business continuity at an airport is threatened by incidents such as left luggage and breaches of secure areas. These activities require rapid response because they are high frequency, high risk and high cost. For these reasons, live tracking and forensic searches of people are important tasks, for example, finding the owner of a left piece of luggage or tracking a trespasser. Finding and tracking people using surveillance cameras without technical aids is time consuming. The roadmap for the rapid finding and tracking of people at airports is based on discussions with end users, an assessment of the state-of-the-art and an integral assessment of work processes, human-machine interfaces, computer vision and the information and communications infrastructure. According to the roadmap, a major step forward can be achieved by integrating advancements in four areas: (i) increasing camera coverage; (ii) implementing computer vision for automated recognition and tracking; (iii) using contextual user interfaces; and (iv) adapting training and work processes to the tasks of finding and tracking people.