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------------
status: published
title: Oxford Town Centre Dataset
desc: Oxford Town Centre is a dataset of surveillance camera footage from Cornmarket St Oxford, England
subdesc: The Oxford Town Centre dataset includes approximately 2,200 identities and is used for research and development of face recognition systems
slug: oxford_town_centre
cssclass: dataset
image: assets/background.jpg
year: 2015
published: 2019-2-23
updated: 2019-2-23
authors: Adam Harvey
------------
## Oxford Town Centre
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The Oxford Town Centre dataset is a CCTV video of pedestrians in a busy downtown area in Oxford used for research and development of activity and face recognition systems.[^ben_benfold_orig] The CCTV video was obtained from a surveillance camera at the corner of Cornmarket and Market St. in Oxford, England and includes approximately 2,200 people. Since its publication in 2009[^guiding_surveillance] the [Oxford Town Centre dataset](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/Research/Projects/2009bbenfold_headpose/project.html) has been used in over 80 verified research projects including commercial research by Amazon, Disney, OSRAM, and Huawei; and academic research in China, Israel, Russia, Singapore, the US, and Germany among dozens more.
The Oxford Town Centre dataset is unique in that it uses footage from a public surveillance camera that would otherwise be designated for public safety. The video shows that the pedestrians act normally and unrehearsed indicating they neither knew of nor consented to participation in the research project.
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### Location
The street location of the camera used for the Oxford Town Centre dataset was confirmed by matching the road, benches, and store signs [source](https://www.google.com/maps/@51.7528162,-1.2581152,3a,50.3y,310.59h,87.23t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s3FsGN-PqYC-VhQGjWgmBdQ!2e0!5s20120601T000000!7i13312!8i6656). At that location, two public CCTV cameras exist mounted on the side of the Northgate House building at 13-20 Cornmarket St. Because of the lower camera's mounting pole directionality, a view from a private camera in the building across the street can be ruled out because it would have to show more of silhouette of the lower camera's mounting pole. Two options remain: either the public CCTV camera mounted to the side of the building was used or the researchers mounted their own camera to the side of the building in the same location. Because the researchers used many other existing public CCTV cameras for their [research projects](http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/ActiveVision/Research/Projects/2009bbenfold_headpose/project.html) it is increasingly likely that they would also be able to access to this camera.
Next, to discredit the theory that this public CCTV is only seen pointing the other way in Google Street View images, at least one public photo shows the upper CCTV camera [pointing in the same direction](https://www.oxcivicsoc.org.uk/northgate-house-cornmarket/) as the Oxford Town Centre dataset, proving the camera can and has been rotated before.
As for the capture date, the text on the storefront display shows a sale happening from December 2nd – 7th indicating the capture date was between or just before those dates. The capture year is either 2008 or 2007, since prior to 2007 the Carphone Warehouse ([photo](https://www.flickr.com/photos/katieportwin/364492063/in/photolist-4meWFE-yd7rw-yd7X6-5sDHuc-yd7DN-59CpEK-5GoHAc-yd7Zh-3G2uJP-yd7US-5GomQH-4peYpq-4bAEwm-PALEr-58RkAp-5pHEkf-5v7fGq-4q1J9W-4kypQ2-5KX2Eu-yd7MV-yd7p6-4McgWb-5pJ55w-24N9gj-37u9LK-4FVcKQ-a81Enz-5qNhTG-59CrMZ-2yuwYM-5oagH5-59CdsP-4FVcKN-4PdxhC-5Lhr2j-2PAd2d-5hAwvk-zsQSG-4Cdr4F-3dUPEi-9B1RZ6-2hv5NY-4G5qwP-HCHBW-4JiuC4-4Pdr9Y-584aEV-2GYBEc-HCPkp/), [history](http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/cornmarket/west/47_51.html)) did not exist at this location. Since the sweaters in the GAP window display are more similar to those in a [GAP website snapshot](web.archive.org/web/20081201002524/http://www.gap.com/) from November 2007, our guess is that the footage was obtained during late November or early December 2007. The lack of street vendors and slight waste residue near the bench suggests that it was probably a weekday after rubbish removal.
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### Footnotes
[^ben_benfold_orig]: Benfold, Ben and Reid, Ian. "Stable Multi-Target Tracking in Real-Time Surveillance Video". CVPR 2011. Pages 3457-3464.
[^guiding_surveillance]: "Guiding Visual Surveillance by Tracking Human Attention". 2009.
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