System, methods, and other embodiments described herein relate to using vehicles as mobile observation platforms and improving the querying of visual data within the vehicles by leveraging edge computing resources of the vehicles in a distributed network. In one embodiment, a method includes, in response to receiving, in a selected vehicle that is equipped with at least one camera, a visual query from a remote device, identifying search parameters from the query that specify at least visual content that is to be identified. The method includes analyzing a subset of a visual inventory to identify whether the subset includes the visual content by using at least a machine vision model executing on a processor within the selected vehicle. The visual inventory includes camera data that is acquired by the selected vehicle. The method includes communicating detection results about whether the subset includes the visual content to the remote device.