The main objective of this thesis is to develop a system for monitoringthe close environment of a level crossing. It aims to develop a perception systemallowing the detection and the evaluation of dangerous situations around a levelcrossing.To achieve this goal, the overall problem of this work has been broken down intothree main stages. In the first stage, we propose a method for optimizing automaticallythe location of video sensors in order to cover optimally a level crossingenvironment. This stage addresses the problem of cameras positioning and orientationin order to view optimally monitored scenes.The second stage aims to implement a method for objects tracking within a surveillancezone. It consists first on developing robust algorithms for detecting and separatingmoving objects around level crossing. The second part of this stage consistsin performing object tracking using a Gaussian propagation optical flow based modeland Kalman filtering.On the basis of the previous steps, the last stage is concerned to present a newmodel to evaluate and recognize potential dangerous situations in a level crossingenvironment. This danger evaluation method is built using Hidden Markov Modeland credibility model.Finally, synthetics and real data are used to test the effectiveness and the robustnessof the proposed algorithms and the whole approach by considering various scenarioswithin several situations.This work is developed within the framework of PANsafer project (Towards a saferlevel crossing), supported by the ANR-VTT program (2008) of the French NationalAgency of Research. This project is also labelled by Pôles de compétitivité "i-Trans"and "Véhicule du Futur". All the work, presented in this thesis, has been conductedjointly within IRTES-SET laboratory from UTBM and LEOST laboratory fromIFSTTAR.
