Real-time automatic detection of vandalism behavior in video sequences

This paper proposes a method for the realtime detection of vandalism in video sequences. The proposed method detects vandalism through the robust extraction of a sequence of high-level events leading to it without resorting to object recognition and using a single camera. Vandalism is declared when an object enters the scene and causes an unauthorized change inside a predefined vandalisable area in the scene such as a pay phone or a sign. The proposed method was tested offline and on-line and our results show that it is robust in detecting vandalism or graffiti in surveillance video sequences.