Automatic traffic monitoring based on aerial image sequences

Traffic monitoring is a very important task in today's traffic control and flow management. The acquisition of traffic data in almost real-time is essential to swiftly react to current situations. Stationary data collectors such as induction loops and video cameras mounted on bridges or traffic lights are matured methods. The latter have been thoroughly studied for instance in [1, 2], and in [5, 9] even for moving cameras. However, they deliver only local data and are not able to observe the global traffic situation. Spaceborne sensors do cover very large areas. Because of their relatively short acquisition time and their long revisit period, such systems contribute to the periodic collection of statistical traffic data to validate and improve certain traffic models.