Methods for determining patterns of presence and ownership of mobile devices by integrating video surveillance with smartphone WiFi monitoring

A method for determining the presence of subjects who have visited multiple areas but do not assist in the determination of their, presence other than by carrying a mobile device emitting wireless probes, comprising these steps:

• a) specifying a minimum time duration and a maximum time duration for which a subject is expected to be present;
• b) specifying a threshold as the maximum amount of time that can pass between the reception of successive wireless probes from any particular mobile device, or after the time of the last probe, before the presence of the mobile device is considered terminated;
• c) providing at least one receiving device in each area, said receiving device capable of acquiring and recording wireless probes from mobile devices in the area;
• d) storing information about wireless probes in each receiving device, said information including the MAC address in each probe and the time of reception by the receiving device of each probe;
• e) analyzing the recorded wireless probes for each MAC address from multiple areas, determining when the mobile device that produced those wireless probes was present for at least a minimum period of time and not more than a maximum period of time, where a given presence is considered ended when the time between successive probes exceeds a threshold or the time since the last probe exceeds the threshold, and producing a list of those MAC addresses that satisfied a criteria, and for each of those MAC addresses, a list of times of presence when the criteria were satisfied.