Embodiments of the invention may include generating a description of a monitored scene and creating a plurality of rules related to the monitored scene by using common language. The description of the monitored scene and the plurality of rules may be converted into system parameters and an analysis of the video data may be performed based on the system parameters. The results of the analysis may be converted into one or more output terms from the plurality of predefined terms and may be displayed to a user in a common language.