A situation monitoring device which enables monitoring of a variety of situations and reporting in response to the situation using a single device is provided. The situation monitoring device is easy to install and to use and a system therefore can be implemented inexpensively. The situation monitoring device recognizes a place or installation where the device is installed (step S102), holds relational information correlating the place of installation and the situation to be recognized and determines a predetermined situation to be recognized according to place of installation recognition results and the relational information (step S104), recognizes a determined predetermined situation (step S106), and reports the result of the predetermined situation to a user (step S108).