Crowd tracking and monitoring middleware via Map-Reduce

This paper presents the design, implementation, and operation of a novel distributed fault-tolerant middleware. It uses interconnected WSNs that implement the Map-Reduce paradigm, consisting of several low-cost and low-power mini-computers (Raspberry Pi). Specifically, we explain the steps for the development of a novice, fault-tolerant Map-Reduce algorithm which achieves high system availability, focusing on network connectivity. Finally, we showcase the use of the proposed system based on simulated data for crowd monitoring in a real case scenario, i.e. a historical building in Greece (M. Hatzidakis’ residence). The technical novelty of this article lies in presenting a viable low-cost and low-power solution for crowd sensing without using complex and resource-intensive AI structures or image/video recognition techniques. GRAPHICAL ABSTRACT