Crime detection to benefit from next generation video surveillance cameras

A cyber research team at the University of Wolverhampton is creating ground-breaking New Federation of Artificial Intelligence (AI) based cameras to transform crime detection and policing.

The project, FedCam: Secured Federation of Visual Sensors (Cameras), is introducing autonomous technology that predicts pre-incident behaviour as well as a ‘one-stop evidence shop’ law-enforcement agency to enhance productivity in post-incident crime prosecution.

Currently, in 70% of reported incidents police cannot prosecute the offender as the evidence is not good enough to identify the person, access to the video content requires a number of time-consuming, compliance stages and for each incident the police need to get separate approval to gain access to video evidence from separate IT/electronic infrastructure.

FedCam will replace traditional surveillance systems that use general prediction and detection techniques which could result in inconclusive evidence. The new system will also negate the need to use local processing and storage infrastructure leading to cost savings.

MP-UoW 2020

Professor Mohammad Patwary, Project Lead at the University, said: “Difficulty in identifying a suspect is one of the main barriers to crime policing that also encourages repeat offenders and costs different sectors of our economy billons of pound each year. The autonomous offender identification and crime detection with AI, working alongside collaborative and secured one-stop evidence accessibility features of FeDCom will reform the crime policing eco-system.”

Professor Prashant Pillai, Director of the University’s Wolverhampton Cyber Research Institute, said: “FeDCam is an outcome of 10 months’ hard work from a dedicated research team at the School of Mathematics & Computer science, which has the potential to revolutionise the video surveillance industry.

“Out of the 23 teams that were selected at the start of CyberASAP, we are really pleased to be one of the 14 teams that have been chosen by an independent panel to continue to the market validation stage of the programme. This stage will help us validate our value proposition and engage with key stakeholders and beneficiaries to further help shape our product features and business plans.”

The team of academics, based in the University’s School of Mathematics and Computer Science, went through a rigorous selection process recently to be part of the Cyber Security Academic Start-ups Accelerator Programme (CyberASAP) aimed at supporting the commercialisation of cyber security research.

CyberASAP provides university teams with the necessary expertise and support to convert their academic ideas into commercial products and services in the cyber security landscape. Funded by the UK Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) in partnership with Innovate UK and KTN (Knowledge Transfer Network), CyberASAP is now in its fifth year.

The retail sector reported 79% repeat offenders at a cost of £4.88bn in 2019.The scale of the problem is consistent in most Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries.

The 2020 retail crime survey highlights that 93% of crimes remain unreported. The 7% of incidents reported equate to 359,156 reported incidents per year. 424 staff reported violent abuse each day. 59% of staff let the offender go. 70% of police responses are poor or very poor, in 32% of cases the suspect cannot be identified or there is no conclusive evidence found and only 5% incidents are successfully prosecuted.

For more information contact: Professor Mohammad Patwary ([email protected]) or Professor Pillai ([email protected]).

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