CCTV project aims to make it easier to track down criminals

‘We plan to develop components to automatically analyse multi-camera networks and footage before and after a trigger incident, such as a riot or fight, to produce a set of video segments relevant to a potential police investigation,’ said Dr James Orwell, leader of the Visual Surveillance Research Group within DIRC. ‘For example, if a window was smashed and a shop looted on a town-centre street, the technology being developed would be able to trace back to see who smashed the window and then retrace his steps to see when and where he entered the town centre.

‘The technology would also trace where the man had gone after leaving the scene — so, for example, if they were wearing a mask or a hoodie during the incident but let their guard down and removed this later after leaving the scene, it could help police to identify them.

‘A simple intruder-detection system could trigger the identification of all video data containing other observations of the intruder. This data could then be isolated into a secure archive, leaving everything else to be safely deleted.’