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Changing the face of crime

Facial recognition technology is not new in South Africa, in fact it has been applied in various access control applications where biometric verification is required for high security installations or T&A clocking points.

FaceVACS facial recognition software, developed by Cognitec Systems in Germany, has recently been applied in South Africa in the fight against crime, particularly in the financial sector.

FaceVACS facial recognition software can be used for database management of facial images, typically for passport control (FaceVACS dbscan); live monitoring via camera feeds of entry/exit points for wanted people (FaceVACS Alert); and biometric verification in access control applications (FaceVACS Access).

Using the FaceVACS Alert software, Modular has changed the application, which is normally a camera video input feed, to actually applying it in a PC workstation format. In this way facial input feeds in the form of composite analog video footage; digital video footage; still pictures in electronic format; or still pictures (photographs) scanned in can be entered into a data base and referenced according to case ID numbers as well as the personal particulars of the person if these are known. Using this aspect of the software a comprehensive database of criminals involved in armed robberies is being established.

Now using the FaceVACS Alert facial recognition search engine these images being analysed can be instantly compared against the database, effectively and simply linking robbers to incidents and establishing gang relationships. Participants in new robberies can also be quickly compared to the database records and using Cognitec's latest facial recognition search engine B3T7 algorithms, matches are now 30% better for real-world video environmental footage when compared with previous search engines.

Because of the powerful B3T7 search engine released by Cognitec Systems in April this year, the application of FaceVACS by Modular Communications is set to establish robbery gang relationships, something that was not possible before. In particular the so-called passive participants and scouts can now be recorded to a database and referenced to case IDs and gang relationships.

Modular has installed the Face VACS Alert software onto PC workstations from where operators input facial images as well as carry out facial comparisons, against a centralised database of images.

This configuration as well as the new search engine B3T7 algorithm makes a powerful crime-busting tool.

FaceVACS Alert works directly with CCTV systems and is the one tool which extracts the information of facial images from this footage into useful crime management information.

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