OREANDA-NEWS. NEC Corporation has developed the world's first "crowd behavior analysis technology" that utilizes security camera footage to understand the behavior of crowds and to detect abnormalities. This technology is expected to contribute to greater safety and security through the early detection of unusual conditions and accidents.

When a large-scale facility or public space attracts a large amount of people, there is always the risk of an unexpected incident taking place, including accidents and acts of crime. As a result, a wide range of heavily trafficked facilities are equipped with security cameras in order to help prevent accidents and to minimize possible damages. However, in a crowded environment, where hundreds of people are interacting in a complex mixture of activity, it is difficult for conventional technologies to quickly detect and identify the characteristics of a disturbance.

NEC's newly developed technology analyzes the influence that an unexpected incident, or the signs of an incident, has on the behavior of a crowd in order to accurately identify changes in the crowd's behavior. As a result, existing security cameras can be used to detect disturbances, such as a sudden change in the flow of foot traffic or a crowd formed around a fallen individual, and to accurately estimate the degree of congestion, even in an extremely crowded environment, such as an event venue or train station during rush-hour.