Kingston University London

Overview

Professor Jones is a member of the UK's biggest visual surveillance research group within Kingston University's Digital Imaging Research Centre (which he founded). The DIRC has developed a particular international recognition for its work on video surveillance, in particular detecting suspicious behaviour captured on CCTV as it unfolds or analysing the giga-volumes of stored CCTV video for clues after an offence or incident has happened. 

"Our research is aimed at developing surveillance tools for existing CCTV infra-structures primarily to improve incident detection and assist CCTV control room operations," says Prof Jones. "Typical CCTV installations expect security staff to monitor large numbers of cameras, and whilst experienced operators are good at interpreting events, attention spans can be extremely short. In addition, most CCTV systems are used to manage incidents typically reported by ground staff, members of the public and intrusion alarms, rather than the CCTV system itself. Our research is now focussing on intelligent systems which can detect an event as it is occurring, and alert surveillance staff to an unusual event,  as opposed to using the video surveillance information in a retrospective way."

The DIRC has also been involved in many government and industry- funded research projects involving the main UK police organisations, Home Office Scientific Development Branch and the National Police Improvement Agency. As well as being a member of the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Councils College, Prof Jones is regularly asked to attend  Police and Home Office advisory meetings and workshops on future requirements or emerging technologies in visual surveillance. He is also a guest editor for special issues of Image & Vision Computing, and Computer Vision and Image Understanding journals. 

Prof Jones' computer vision work is concerned with developing computer algorithms to analyse camera images or video streams. The range of applications is vast, from medical imaging techniques and film editing tools to developing mobile phone tools which can manipulate images.