Efficient Video Surveillance: Performance Evaluation in Distributed Video Surveillance Systems

The ultimate aim of performance evaluation is to improve the system efficiency. Overall efficiency of the system is a combination of three factors: system functionality, performance and cost. Whereas system functionality improvement and cost optimisation are usually well understood and implemented the third factor of system performance is usually under prioritized. The development and improvements on system functionality are naturally driven by market requirements such as new features, compliance to common standards and adaptation of new technologies. The evaluation of system functionality is available by features benchmarking, etc. The evaluation of cost might be more complex due to the fact of different criteria of system pricing and various methods of following the costs of system and system maintenance. However, the cost of the system is also usually quite well evaluated and optimised it is naturally driven by market economics. The task of performance evaluation followed with measurements and tests are usually performed only when certain performance problems appear in a system. Additionally, the methodologies to measure and evaluate system performance are not well known and understood. We believe that this approach should be changed. The factors describing system efficiency are interleaved the performance can affect the cost of the system (usually long termmaintenance costs) also the general system functionality depends upon system performance, a system of poor performance may not be able to accommodate new functionality or expand without difficult structural changes.