Automated Discovery of Real-Time Network Camera Data From Heterogeneous Web Pages

Reduction in the cost of Network Cameras along with a rise in connectivity enables entities all around the world to deploy vast arrays of camera networks. Network cameras offer real-time visual data that can be used for studying traffic patterns, emergency response, security, and other applications. Although many sources of Network Camera data are available, collecting the data remains difficult due to variations in programming interface and website structures. Previous solutions rely on manually parsing the target website, taking many hours to complete. We create a general and automated solution for aggregating Network Camera data spread across thousands of uniquely structured web pages. We analyze heterogeneous web page structures and identify common characteristics among 73 sample Network Camera websites (each website has multiple web pages). These characteristics are then used to build an automated camera discovery module that crawls and aggregates Network Camera data. Our system successfully extracts 57,364 Network Cameras from 237,257 unique web pages.

See the World through Network Cameras

Millions of network cameras have been deployed worldwide. Real-time data from many network cameras can offer instant views of multiple locations with applications in public safety, transportation management, urban planning, agriculture, forestry, social sciences, atmospheric information, and more. This paper describes the real-time data available from worldwide network cameras and potential applications. Second, this paper outlines the CAM2 System available to users at https://www.cam2project.net/. This information includes strategies to discover network cameras and create the camera database, user interface, and computing platforms. Third, this paper describes many opportunities provided by data from network cameras and challenges to be addressed.