Techniques for detecting an attribute in video surveillance include generating training sets of multispectral images, generating a group of multispectral box features comprising receiving input of a detector size of a width and height, a number of spectral bands in the multispectral images, and integer values representing a minimum and maximum width and height of multispectral box features, fixing a feature width and to height, generating feature building blocks with the fixed width and height, placing a feature building block at a same location for each spectral band level, and enumerating combinations of the feature building blocks through each spectral level until all sizes within the integer values have been covered, and wherein each combination determines a multispectral box feature, using the training sets to select multispectral box features to generate a multispectral attribute detector, and using the multispectral attribute detector to identify a location of an attribute in video surveillance.