Video retrieval system, method and computer program for surveillance of moving objects

Video retrieval system connectable to a plurality of surveillance cameras for monitoring a surroundings, the video retrieval system comprising:

• displaying means for displaying a graphical overall description of the surroundings under surveillance, whereby the graphical overall description comprises a plurality of monitored areas that are allocated to different surveillance cameras and whereby the graphical overall description is displayed in a single perspective view, and
• querying means comprising a graphical user interface configured to enable a user to formulate a trajectory-specific search query graphically and/or interactively on the graphical overall description, the search query adapted to retrieve data about a moving object in the surroundings with a matching trajectory, and
• wherein the graphical user interface enables users to draw any of the group consisting of lines, curves, circles, hand-drawn lines, a spline generated by a plurality of single interpolation points of the graphical overall description and any combination thereof, thereby formulating the search query, wherein the video retrieval system is characterized by merging means for merging object-related information of the video data of the plurality of cameras into object-related meta-data, and wherein the video retrieval system is characterized in that the merging means is realized to merge the video data into the overall description and to extract object-related meta-data from the overall description and/or to extract object-related information from the video data of the plurality of cameras and to link and/or merge the object-related information to generate the object-related meta-data.