Resumen
The analysis of video material collected by national and regional Law Enforcement Agencies (LEA) from many varied sources, including CCTV and handled cameras, has become a critical component in investigations related to major criminal acts and terrorist attacks. The amount of video data of interest for legal investigations is continuously increasing with the rapid deployment of video equipment, surveillance cameras in public and private areas, body-worn cameras of police forces, smartphones or digital cameras used by bystanders recording crime scenes, or even the criminals/terrorists themselves posting videos on the Web that they recorded during the act.
There is hence an urgent need for efficient tools that can assist the LEAs in their daily video investigation tasks, to help them to process the huge volume of video material with less effort, and to find clues and evidences faster. The urgency of addressing this need has become particularly clear after the recent vague of terrorist attacks that hit European countries.
The core technology for such tools is video analytics. Video analytics is a technology from the computer vision domain, aiming at finding and recognising objects, persons, scenes, etc. Many previous projects have developed video analytics for other applications, which are also relevant for video investigation tools. However, the current TRL of these analytics is only sufficient for applications in a controlled environment, i.e. were camera position and parameters, lighting conditions, image quality, etc., are suitable.
In view of the needs and challenges described above and the absence of a robust technical solution, VICTORIA aims at creating a real breakthrough regarding functionality and usability of video analysis tools used for legal investigations.
