The invention discloses a terminal-side electric power safety operation image identification method. According to a traditional image-based safety helmet identification method, in order to guarantee the identification accuracy, a large number of features are extracted for modeling and classification; the method has high calculation complexity, and the calculation capability of the terminal-side MCU is difficult to support the operation of the existing algorithm. The terminal-side electric power safety operation image recognition method comprises two parts of model training and safety helmet recognition, the training and safety helmet recognition processes are both completed on the camera terminal side, the camera only sends an image in which it is discovered that an operator does not weara safety helmet to the background server, and the rest data are locally stored in the camera. The method provided by the invention has relatively low calculation amount and data storage amount, and can realize safety helmet wearing condition identification of an operator at a camera terminal side.