Described is a system for multiscale monitoring. During operation, the system receives surveillance data of a scene having a plurality of zones. The surveillance data includes an object flow tensor V indicating a number of objects flowing from one zone to another zone at time t and an object communication tensor C indicating a number of communications sending from one zone to another zone at time t. The system then determines a cluster membership of the plurality of zones. Dependency links between communications and flows are then determined. At least one cluster of one or more zones is designated as a region of interest based on the dependency links, which allows the system to control a device based on the designated region(s) of interest.
