Cognitive Surveillance: Why does it never appear among the AVSS   Conferences topics?
  Video Surveillance is a fast evolving field of research and development (R&D) driven by the urgent need for public security and safety (due to the growing threats of terrorism, vandalism, and anti-social behavior). Traditionally, surveillance systems are comprised of two components - video cameras distributed over the guarded area and human observer watching and analyzing the incoming video. Explosive growth of installed cameras and limited human operator's ability to process the delivered video content raise an urgent demand for developing surveillance systems with human like cognitive capabilities, that is - Cognitive surveillance systems. The growing interest in this issue is testified by the tens of workshops, symposiums and conferences held over the world each year. The IEEE International Conference on Advanced Video and Signal-Based Surveillance (AVSS) is certainly one of them. However, for unknown reasons, the term Cognitive Surveillance does never appear among its topics. As to me, the explanation for this is simple - the complexity and the indefinable nature of the term "Cognition". In this paper, I am trying to resolve the problem providing a novel definition of cognition equally suitable for biological as well as technological applications. I hope my humble efforts will be helpful. 
Emanuel Diamant
cs.AI q-bio.NC