Ensuring citizens’ safety and security has been identified as the number one priority for city authorities when it comes to the use of smart city technologies. Automatic understanding of the scene, and the associated provision of situational awareness for emergency situations, are able to efficiently contribute to such domains. In this study, a Video Analytics Edge Computing (VAEC) system is presented that performs real-time enhanced situation awareness for person detection in a video surveillance manner that is also able to share geolocated person detection alerts and other accompanied crucial information. The VAEC system adopts state-of-the-art object detection and tracking algorithms, and it is integrated with the proposed Distribute Edge Computing Internet of Things (DECIoT) platform. The aforementioned alerts and information are able to be shared, though the DECIoT, to smart city platforms utilizing proper middleware. To verify the utility and functionality of the VAEC system, extended experiments were performed (i) in several light conditions, (ii) using several camera sensors, and (iii) in several use cases, such as installed in fixed position of a building or mounted to a car. The results highlight the potential of VAEC system to be exploited by decision-makers or city authorities, providing enhanced situational awareness.

Advances in Artificial intelligence (AI) and embedded systems have resulted on a recent increase in use of image processing applications for smart cities’ safety. This enables a cost-adequate scale of automated video surveillance, increasing the data available and releasing human intervention. At the same time, although deep learning is a very intensive task in terms of computing resources, hardware and software improvements have emerged, allowing embedded systems to implement sophisticated machine learning algorithms at the edge. Additionally, new lightweight open-source middleware for constrained resource devices, such as EdgeX Foundry, have appeared to facilitate the collection and processing of data at sensor level, with communication capabilities to exchange data with a cloud enterprise application. The objective of this work is to show and describe the development of two Edge Smart Camera Systems for safety of Smart cities within S4AllCities H2020 project. Hence, the work presents hardware and software modules developed within the project, including a custom hardware platform specifically developed for the deployment of deep learning models based on the I.MX8 Plus from NXP, which considerably reduces processing and inference times; a custom Video Analytics Edge Computing (VAEC) system deployed on a commercial NVIDIA Jetson TX2 platform, which provides high level results on person detection processes; and an edge computing framework for the management of those two edge devices, namely Distributed Edge Computing framework, DECIoT. To verify the utility and functionality of the systems, extended experiments were performed. The results highlight their potential to provide enhanced situational awareness and demonstrate the suitability for edge machine vision applications for safety in smart cities.