This paper presents a smart surveillance system named CASSANDRA, aimed at detecting instances of aggressive human behavior in public environments. A distinguishing aspect of CASSANDRA is the exploitation of complementary audio and video cues to disambiguate scene activity in real-life environments. From the video side, the system uses overlapping cameras to track persons in 3D and to extract features regarding the limb motion relative to the torso. From the audio side, it classifies instances

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... speech, screaming, singing, and kicking-object. The audio and video cues are fused with contextual cues (interaction, auxiliary objects); a Dynamic Bayesian Network (DBN) produces an estimate of the ambient aggression level. Our prototype system is validated on a realistic set of scenarios performed by professional actors at an actual train station to ensure a realistic audio and video noise setting. (D.M. Gavrila). 1 Author is now with the Cognitive Systems Group at INCAS3, Assen, The Netherlands. 2 In Greek mythology, the daughter of Priam, the last king of Troy, and his wife Hecuba. Cassandra was loved by the god Apollo who promised her the power of prophecy if she would comply with his desires. Cassandra accepted the proposal, received the gift, and then refused the god her favors. Apollo revenged himself by ordaining that her prophecies should never be believed (source: Encyclopedia Britannica).