Foreword

Welcome to the proceedings of the 2nd Joint IEEE International Workshop on Visual Surveillance and Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance (VS-PETS), held on October 15-16, 2005 in Beijing, China. The two day workshop is being held in conjunction with the Tenth International Conference on Computer Vision (ICCV'05). Visual surveillance has a leading role to play in reducing the personal and financial costs of preventing crimes and terrorism. These costs are expected to be more than $1 trillion in 2005. It is now feasible to deploy large networks of cameras over wide areas and collect from the cameras colossal amounts of image data. The methods for processing this data have not kept pace with the improvements in the hardware. There is a strong demand for automatic methods for analysing, indexing and storing huge image databases. How can a complete picture of all the scene activities be obtained? How should events be classified and which events require the attention of the network operators? Is it possible to recognise people reliably using biometrics such as size, shape and gait? How can the data be indexed and stored in order to facilitate later searches? How should the performance of visual surveillance algorithms be measured? How should the information obtained from visual surveillance networks be supplied to and used by the larger social, legal and state infrastructures involved in the fight against terrorism? The workshop presents the second workshop combining the IEEE International Workshop on Visual Surveillance and the IEEE International Workshop on Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance. The International Workshops on Visual Surveillance were previously held in Bombay (ICCV'98), Fort Collins, CO (CVPR'99) and Dublin (ECCV 2000).. The International Workshops on Performance Evaluation of Tracking and Surveillance originated in Grenoble in 2000 with FG'2000, and subsequently Kauai in 2001 (CVPR'01), Copenhagen (ECCV'02), Graz (ICVS'03), Nice (VS-PETS, ICCV'03), Prague (ECCV'04) and Breckenridge, CO (WAMOP-PETS 2005).
We would like to thank all of those who have contributed papers to the workshop. Each paper was reviewed by three programme committee members. The final programme consists of one invited talk, 19 oral presentations and 26 posters. The topics range from background modelling, learning and tracking, through to behavioural modelling, recognition and performance evaluation, across a range of application domains. We would also like to thank the members of the programme committee for their prompt and detailed reviewing of the papers. VS-PETS is supported by the IEEE Computer Society. Finally, thanks to the workshop chairs and to Bill Triggs for his coordination and help with the organisation of the workshop. We hope that you enjoy the proceedings and look forward to your active participation.

Rama Chellappa, James Ferryman and Tieniu Tan Co-Chairs October 2005