Pedestrian Origin–Destination Estimation Based on Multi-Camera Person Re-Identification

Pedestrian origin–destination (O–D) estimates that record traffic flows between origins and destinations, are essential for the management of pedestrian facilities including pedestrian flow simulation in the planning phase and crowd control in the operation phase. However, current O–D data collection techniques such as surveys, mobile sensing using GPS, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth, and smart card data have the disadvantage that they are either time consuming and costly, or cannot provide complete O–D information for pedestrian facilities without entrances and exits or pedestrian flow inside the facilities. Due to the full coverage of CCTV cameras and the huge potential of image processing techniques, we address the challenges of pedestrian O–D estimation and propose an image-based O–D estimation framework. By identifying the same person in disjoint camera views, the O–D trajectory of each identity can be accurately generated. Then, state-of-the-art deep neural networks (DNNs) for person re-ID at different congestion levels were compared and improved. Finally, an O–D matrix based on trajectories was generated and the resident time was calculated, which provides recommendations for pedestrian facility improvement. The factors that affect the accuracy of the framework are discussed in this paper, which we believe could provide new insights and stimulate further research into the application of the Internet of cameras to intelligent transport infrastructure management.