Deep Learning Based Efficient Crowd Counting System

Estimation of crowd count is becoming crucial nowadays,as it can help in security surveillance,crowd monitoring,and management for different events.It is challenging to determine the approximate crowd size from an image of the crowd’s density.Therefore in this research study,we proposed a multi-headed convolutional neural network architecture-based model for crowd counting,where we divided our proposed model into two main components:(i)the convolutional neural network,which extracts the feature across the whole image that is given to it as an input,and(ii)the multi-headed layers,which make it easier to evaluate density maps to estimate the number of people in the input image and determine their number in the crowd.We employed the available public benchmark crowd-counting datasets UCF CC 50 and ShanghaiTech parts A and B for model training and testing to validate the model’s performance.To analyze the results,we used two metrics Mean Absolute Error(MAE)and Mean Square Error(MSE),and compared the results of the proposed systems with the state-of-art models of crowd counting.The results show the superiority of the proposed system.

PERSISTENCE AND THE GLOBAL DYNAMICS OF THE POSITIVE SOLUTIONS FOR A RATIODEPENDENT PREDATOR-PREY SYSTEM WITH A CROWDING TERM IN THE PREY EQUATION

This paper deals with the global dynamical behaviors of the positive solutions for a parabolic type ratio-dependent predator-prey system with a crowding term in the prey equation, where it is assumed that the coefficient of the functional response is less than the coefficient of the intrinsic growth rates of the prey species. We demonstrated some special dynamical behaviors of the positive solutions of this system which the persistence of the coexistence of two species can be obtained when the crowding region in the prey equation only is designed suitably. Furthermore, we can obtain that under some conditions, the unique positive steady state solution of the system is globally asymptotically stable.

Knowledge Learning With Crowdsourcing:A Brief Review and Systematic Perspective

Big data have the characteristics of enormous volume,high velocity,diversity,value-sparsity,and uncertainty,which lead the knowledge learning from them full of challenges.With the emergence of crowdsourcing,versatile information can be obtained on-demand so that the wisdom of crowds is easily involved to facilitate the knowledge learning process.During the past thirteen years,researchers in the AI community made great efforts to remove the obstacles in the field of learning from crowds.This concentrated survey paper comprehensively reviews the technical progress in crowdsourcing learning from a systematic perspective that includes three dimensions of data,models,and learning processes.In addition to reviewing existing important work,the paper places a particular emphasis on providing some promising blueprints on each dimension as well as discussing the lessons learned from our past research work,which will light up the way for new researchers and encourage them to pursue new contributions.

Video Scene Invariant Crowd Density Estimation Using Geographic Information Systems

Crowd density is an important factor of crowd stability.Previous crowd density estimation methods are highly dependent on the specific video scene.This paper presented a video scene invariant crowd density estimation method using Geographic Information Systems(GIS) to monitor crowd size for large areas.The proposed method mapped crowd images to GIS.Then we can estimate crowd density for each camera in GIS using an estimation model obtained by one camera.Test results show that one model obtained by one camera in GIS can be adaptively applied to other cameras in outdoor video scenes.A real-time monitoring system for crowd size in large areas based on scene invariant model has been successfully used in 'Jiangsu Qinhuai Lantern Festival,2012'.It can provide early warning information and scientific basis for safety and security decision making.

Video-Based Crowd Density Estimation and Prediction System for Wide-Area Surveillance

Crowd density estimation in wide areas is a challenging problem for visual surveillance. Because of the high risk of degeneration, the safety of public events involving large crowds has always been a major concern. In this paper, we propose a video-based crowd density analysis and prediction system for wide-area surveillance applications. In monocular image sequences, the Accumulated Mosaic Image Difference (AMID) method is applied to extract crowd areas having irregular motion. The specific number of persons and velocity of a crowd can be adequately estimated by our system from the density of crowded areas. Using a multi-camera network, we can obtain predictions of a crowd's density several minutes in advance. The system has been used in real applications, and numerous experiments conducted in real scenes (station, park, plaza) demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method.

A Secure Key Agreement Scheme for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles-Based Crowd Monitoring System

Unmanned aerial vehicles(UAVs)have recently attractedwidespread attention in civil and commercial applications.For example,UAVs(or drone)technology is increasingly used in crowd monitoring solutions due to its wider air footprint and the ability to capture data in real time.However,due to the open atmosphere,drones can easily be lost or captured by attackers when reporting information to the crowd management center.In addition,the attackers may initiate malicious detection to disrupt the crowd-sensing communication network.Therefore,security and privacy are one of the most significant challenges faced by drones or the Internet of Drones(IoD)that supports the Internet of Things(IoT).In the literature,we can find some authenticated key agreement(AKA)schemes to protect access control between entities involved in the IoD environment.However,the AKA scheme involves many vulnerabilities in terms of security and privacy.In this paper,we propose an enhancedAKAsolution for crowdmonitoring applications that require secure communication between drones and controlling entities.Our scheme supports key security features,including anti-forgery attacks,and confirms user privacy.The security characteristics of our scheme are analyzed byNS2 simulation and verified by a random oracle model.Our simulation results and proofs show that the proposed scheme sufficiently guarantees the security of crowd-aware communication.

A Deep Learning-Based Crowd Counting Method and System Implementation on Neural Processing Unit Platform

In this paper, a deep learning-based method is proposed for crowdcountingproblems. Specifically, by utilizing the convolution kernel densitymap, the ground truth is generated dynamically to enhance the featureextractingability of the generator model. Meanwhile, the “cross stage partial”module is integrated into congested scene recognition network (CSRNet) toobtain a lightweight network model. In addition, to compensate for the accuracydrop owing to the lightweight model, we take advantage of “structuredknowledge transfer” to train the model in an end-to-end manner. It aimsto accelerate the fitting speed and enhance the learning ability of the studentmodel. The crowd-counting system solution for edge computing is alsoproposed and implemented on an embedded device equipped with a neuralprocessing unit. Simulations demonstrate the performance improvement ofthe proposed solution in terms of model size, processing speed and accuracy.The performance on the Venice dataset shows that the mean absolute error(MAE) and the root mean squared error (RMSE) of our model drop by32.63% and 39.18% compared with CSRNet. Meanwhile, the performance onthe ShanghaiTech PartB dataset reveals that the MAE and the RMSE of ourmodel are close to those of CSRNet. Therefore, we provide a novel embeddedplatform system scheme for public safety pre-warning applications.

Securing Cloud Computing from Flash Crowd Attack Using Ensemble Intrusion Detection System

Flash Crowd attacks are a form of Distributed Denial of Service(DDoS)attack that is becoming increasingly difficult to detect due to its ability to imitate normal user behavior in Cloud Computing(CC).Botnets are often used by attackers to perform a wide range of DDoS attacks.With advancements in technology,bots are now able to simulate DDoS attacks as flash crowd events,making them difficult to detect.When it comes to application layer DDoS attacks,the Flash Crowd attack that occurs during a Flash Event is viewed as the most intricate issue.This is mainly because it can imitate typical user behavior,leading to a substantial influx of requests that can overwhelm the server by consuming either its network bandwidth or resources.Therefore,identifying these types of attacks on web servers has become crucial,particularly in the CC.In this article,an efficient intrusion detection method is proposed based on White Shark Optimizer and ensemble classifier(Convolutional Neural Network(CNN)and LighGBM).Experiments were conducted using a CICIDS 2017 dataset to evaluate the performance of the proposed method in real-life situations.The proposed IDS achieved superior results,with 95.84%accuracy,96.15%precision,95.54%recall,and 95.84%F1 measure.Flash crowd attacks are challenging to detect,but the proposed IDS has proven its effectiveness in identifying such attacks in CC and holds potential for future improvement.

Crowd Monitoring System Using Unmanned Aerial Vehicle （UAV）

Understanding and dealing with safety aspects of crowd dynamics in mass gatherings of people related to sports, religiousand cultural activities is very important, specifically with respect to crowd risk analysis and crowd safety. Historical trends from theKingdom of Saudi Arabia hosting millions of pilgrims each year during the Hajj and Omrah seasons suggest that stampedes in massgatherings occur frequently and highlight the importance of studying and dealing with the crowd dynamics more scientifically. In thisregard, efficient monitoring and other safe crowd management techniques have been used to minimize the risks associated with suchmass gathering. An example of these techniques is real-time monitoring of crowd using a UAV （Unmanned Aerial Vehicle）; thistechnique is becoming increasingly popular with the objective to save human lives, preserve environment, protect property, keep thepeace, and uphold governmental authority. In this paper, a crowd monitoring system for pedestrians has been proposed and tested. Thesystem has deployed crowd monitoring technique using real-time images taken by UAVs; the collected data was investigated, andcrowd density was estimated using image segmentation procedures. A color-based segmentation method has been employed to detect,identify and map crowd density under different camera positions and orientations. Furthermore, the associated anomalies/outlierswhich may lead to non-classification of features have been eliminated using image enhancement tools. The paper presents a crowdmonitoring system for pedestrians that can contribute to an area of research still in its infancy. The proposed system is a valuable tool interms of facilitating timely decisions, based on highly accurate information. The results show that the used image segmentationtechnique has the capability of mapping the crowd density with an accuracy level up to 80%.

Design and Availability Research of a Flammable and Explosive Volatiles Monitoring and Early Warning System (FEVMEW) for the Bus Crowded Places

In order to reduce the arson or accidental fire losses, we developed a gas sensitive detector used for the rapid detection and early warning of flammables in crowded places such as buses. A MEMS (Micro-Electro-Mechanical System) based thin film semiconductor was fabricated as the gas sensor. To obtain the target gas selective response, the surface of the sensitive film was modified with highly active metal catalytic nano-particles. Thus the anti-interference ability was improved and the false alarm rate was effectively reduced. Furthermore, the modular embedded system for information acquisition and transmission was developed. Supported by the Airflow Precision control system (APs), the rapid warning of volatile gas of flammable substances was realized. Experiments showed that RAs has satisfied selectivity to volatiles of usual flammable liquid, such as the output voltage reaches 3 V (0 - 3.3 V). With simulation about the actual installation state in bus, MWs sounds an alarm at 2 minutes after splashing 50 mL 92# petrol to the floor. For the last two years, FEVMEW has been integrated into more than 4000 buses in Hefei. This design has been proved feasible according to the actual operation.

CCM-FL:Covert communication mechanisms for federated learning in crowd sensing IoT

The past decades have witnessed a wide application of federated learning in crowd sensing,to handle the numerous data collected by the sensors and provide the users with precise and customized services.Meanwhile,how to protect the private information of users in federated learning has become an important research topic.Compared with the differential privacy(DP)technique and secure multiparty computation(SMC)strategy,the covert communication mechanism in federated learning is more efficient and energy-saving in training the ma-chine learning models.In this paper,we study the covert communication problem for federated learning in crowd sensing Internet-of-Things networks.Different from the previous works about covert communication in federated learning,most of which are considered in a centralized framework and experimental-based,we firstly proposes a centralized covert communication mechanism for federated learning among n learning agents,the time complexity of which is O(log n),approximating to the optimal solution.Secondly,for the federated learning without parameter server,which is a harder case,we show that solving such a problem is NP-hard and prove the existence of a distributed covert communication mechanism with O(log logΔlog n)times,approximating to the optimal solution.Δis the maximum distance between any pair of learning agents.Theoretical analysis and nu-merical simulations are presented to show the performance of our covert communication mechanisms.We hope that our covert communication work can shed some light on how to protect the privacy of federated learning in crowd sensing from the view of communications.

A Game-Theoretic Approach to Safe Crowd Evacuation in Emergencies

Obstacle removal in crowd evacuation is critical to safety and the evacuation system efficiency. Recently, manyresearchers proposed game theoreticmodels to avoid and remove obstacles for crowd evacuation. Game theoreticalmodels aim to study and analyze the strategic behaviors of individuals within a crowd and their interactionsduring the evacuation. Game theoretical models have some limitations in the context of crowd evacuation. Thesemodels consider a group of individuals as homogeneous objects with the same goals, involve complex mathematicalformulation, and cannot model real-world scenarios such as panic, environmental information, crowds that movedynamically, etc. The proposed work presents a game theoretic model integrating an agent-based model to removethe obstacles from exits. The proposed model considered the parameters named: (1) obstacle size, length, andwidth, (2) removal time, (3) evacuation time, (4) crowd density, (5) obstacle identification, and (6) route selection.The proposed work conducts various experiments considering different conditions, such as obstacle types, obstacleremoval, and several obstacles. Evaluation results show the proposed model’s effectiveness compared with existingliterature in reducing the overall evacuation time, cell selection, and obstacle removal. The study is potentially usefulfor public safety situations such as emergency evacuations during disasters and calamities.

Lightweight Res-Connection Multi-Branch Network for Highly Accurate Crowd Counting and Localization

Crowd counting is a promising hotspot of computer vision involving crowd intelligence analysis,achieving tremendous success recently with the development of deep learning.However,there have been stillmany challenges including crowd multi-scale variations and high network complexity,etc.To tackle these issues,a lightweight Resconnection multi-branch network(LRMBNet)for highly accurate crowd counting and localization is proposed.Specifically,using improved ShuffleNet V2 as the backbone,a lightweight shallow extractor has been designed by employing the channel compression mechanism to reduce enormously the number of network parameters.A light multi-branch structure with different expansion rate convolutions is demonstrated to extract multi-scale features and enlarged receptive fields,where the information transmission and fusion of diverse scale features is enhanced via residual concatenation.In addition,a compound loss function is introduced for training themethod to improve global context information correlation.The proposed method is evaluated on the SHHA,SHHB,UCF-QNRF and UCF_CC_50 public datasets.The accuracy is better than those of many advanced approaches,while the number of parameters is smaller.The experimental results show that the proposed method achieves a good tradeoff between the complexity and accuracy of crowd counting,indicating a lightweight and high-precision method for crowd counting.

A Weakly-Supervised Crowd Density Estimation Method Based on Two-Stage Linear Feature Calibration

In a crowd density estimation dataset,the annotation of crowd locations is an extremely laborious task,and they are not taken into the evaluation metrics.In this paper,we aim to reduce the annotation cost of crowd datasets,and propose a crowd density estimation method based on weakly-supervised learning,in the absence of crowd position supervision information,which directly reduces the number of crowds by using the number of pedestrians in the image as the supervised information.For this purpose,we design a new training method,which exploits the correlation between global and local image features by incremental learning to train the network.Specifically,we design a parent-child network(PC-Net)focusing on the global and local image respectively,and propose a linear feature calibration structure to train the PC-Net simultaneously,and the child network learns feature transfer factors and feature bias weights,and uses the transfer factors and bias weights to linearly feature calibrate the features extracted from the Parent network,to improve the convergence of the network by using local features hidden in the crowd images.In addition,we use the pyramid vision transformer as the backbone of the PC-Net to extract crowd features at different levels,and design a global-local feature loss function(L2).We combine it with a crowd counting loss(LC)to enhance the sensitivity of the network to crowd features during the training process,which effectively improves the accuracy of crowd density estimation.The experimental results show that the PC-Net significantly reduces the gap between fullysupervised and weakly-supervised crowd density estimation,and outperforms the comparison methods on five datasets of Shanghai Tech Part A,ShanghaiTech Part B,UCF_CC_50,UCF_QNRF and JHU-CROWD++.

Automated evaluation of parapapillary choroidal microvasculature in crowded optic discs:a controlled,optical coherence tomography angiography study

AIM:To compare superficial and deep vascular properties of optic discs between crowded discs and controls using optical coherence tomography angiography(OCT-A).METHODS:Thirty patients with crowded discs,and 47 control subjects were enrolled in the study.One eye of each individual was included and OCT-A scans of optic discs were obtained in a 4.5×4.5 mm^(2) rectangular area.Radial peripapillary capillary(RPC)density,peripapillary retinal nerve fiber layer(pRNFL)thickness,cup volume,rim area,disc area,cup-to-disc(c/d)area ratio,and vertical c/d ratio were obtained automatically using device software.Automated parapapillary choroidal microvasculature(PPCMv)density was calculated using MATLAB software.When the vertical c/d ratio of the optic disc was absent or small cup,it was considered as a crowded disc.RESULTS:The mean signal strength index of OCT-A images was similar between the crowded discs and control eyes(P=0.740).There was no difference in pRNFL between the two groups(P=0.102).There were no differences in RPC density in whole image(P=0.826)and peripapillary region(P=0.923),but inside disc RPC density was higher in crowded optic discs(P=0.003).The PPCMv density in the inner-hemisuperior region was also lower in crowded discs(P=0.026).The pRNFL thickness was positively correlated with peripapillary RPC density(r=0.498,P<0.001).The inside disc RPC density was negatively correlated with c/d area ratio(r=-0.341,P=0.002).CONCLUSION:The higher inside disc RPC density and lower inner-hemisuperior PPCMv density are found in eyes with crowded optic discs.

Design of Barrier-free Evacuation for Diverse Crowd on Campus Based on Evacuation Simulation: A Case Study of North China University of Technology

By using evacuation simulation technology and taking North China University of Technology as an example,the barrier-free evacuation design scheme for groups with different needs in campus environment was deeply discussed.Based on the data of building layout,population composition,road system and distribution of shelters in the school,a detailed evacuation model was constructed in the Pathfinder emergency evacuation simulation system.By the simulation during the daytime and at night,the total evacuation time of the whole school,evacuation completion time of each building,selection of evacuation paths and shelter utilization were analyzed in detail.The simulation results show that the distribution of shelters on campus is uneven,and their capacity is limited.As a result,the evacuation paths of the disabled,the elderly and children need to be adjusted frequently,which affects the overall evacuation efficiency.In view of this,the optimization strategies of road renovation and entrances of shelters and buildings were put forward from the perspective of space planning.From the perspective of emergency management,it is suggested to improve the campus evacuation infrastructure and strengthen the evacuation drill for teachers and students.These results provide a solid theoretical support for enhancing the construction of campus barrier-free environment and improving the level of emergency management.

基于时延的Flash Crowd控制模型

提出了一种session级别的flash crowd控制策略SGAC(session-granularity admission control),将session控制粒度和request控制粒度相结合,采用请求平均返回时延作为检测和控制的依据.对session采取一旦接受就完成的策略,在实现对服务器过载控制的同时,保护用户session的完整性,并能自动调节新session的准入速率,以提高服务器利用率.采用真实HTTP Log进行模拟,结果表明,SGAC方法能够有效控制服务器过载,保护session的完整性,提高服务器利用率,降低接入端路由器计算开销,保护有价值的交易session.

转发概率递减的改进Crowds系统

Crowds匿名浏览系统中可以在不影响匿名度水平的前提下,通过递减转发概率减小重路由路径长度,提高系统性能。提出利用路径长度期望值递减规律确定转发概率递减比例系数的方法,仿真实验表明,新方案可以在保持原有匿名度的基础上,有效减小重路由路径长度,提高Crowds系统的通信性能。

Crowds系统中新的前驱攻击模型研究

对前驱攻击模型攻击成功的概率和攻击轮数的原理和机制进行了详细的分析,在此基础上,提出了新的统计前驱攻击模型,该模型在每一轮重路由路径建立完毕后,对路径上所有泄密节点的直接前驱进行统计,减少了攻击的重建路径次数.仿真实验表明,与前驱攻击相比,新的统计前驱攻击可以有效地提高攻击的成功概率.

一种基于Crowds的改进匿名通信系统

提出一种基于Crowds的改进匿名通信系统,通过结合mix匿名通信技术和填充流量技术,使改进的匿名通信系统能抵御两种攻击.此外,对改进的匿名系统在前驱攻击下的匿名性能进行了分析,推导出改进系统在前驱攻击下能提供更好的匿名保护.