In the context of MARVEL project, the UNS team will be working on evaluating the MARVEL methodologies using drones, cameras and microphones, for the monitoring of large space public events, such as the EXIT music festival. The main motivation for this combination of technologies comes from the fact that large events in the open often lack appropriate infrastructure for the observation of the crowd’s behavior. For example, fixed positions of street cameras could only provide side views, which might not be enough to detect an event which requires intervention in crowded areas (that can, for example, occur in the middle of crowds). In addition, there might be altogether a complete lack of the necessary infrastructure, which is often the case for events that occur outside main city areas.

The advantage of drone-based technologies is evident: drones can quickly change position and fly over the main event areas to check if any problem has occurred. If a problem is spotted, local inference can be performed at the edge device (drone) or the fog location (local server) alongside the information obtained from the data captured on the ground. Such information can be sent along with the event location to the authorities or emergency crews. Drone communication with the fog layer can be done via Wi-Fi or LTE-M wireless connections. We plan to investigate the application of both technologies for their different capabilities, such as coverage areas and supported data rates.