"Smart cameras" to tackle abandoned luggage alarms

"To fully detect if this person wants to catch a train or it's an anomaly, the decision has to be taken by the person monitoring," said Louis-Marie Cleon, scientific director at French railways SNCF, which took part in the research.

Sagem's Suchier cautioned that the technology was still young and it could take 10 years before robust systems were in place to monitor large crowds reliably for a full range of threats, without triggering excessive false alarms.

But more limited solutions could be introduced much faster to the specific problem of abandoned baggage. In a follow-up to ISCAPS, scientists will look at how to automatically link video from all available cameras to show immediately who left the bag and trace their subsequent movements.

"In the coming years the technology will be able to find who is the person who has dropped the bag and where has this person gone," Suchier said. "If this works, then it will be a major benefit for the operators."

Other companies involved in ISCAPS were BAE Systems Plc, Spain's GMV and Italy's Elsag Datamat, part of the Finmeccanica group, together with research institutes from France, Britain and the Netherlands.