Project Title

Petty criminality diminution through search and analysis in multi-source video Capturing and archiving plaTform

Abstract

Petty Crimes (also known as Volume Crime) take place on a daily basis affecting citizens, local communities, business owners and infrastructure owners. Petty Crime incidents such as theft, criminal damage and anti-social behaviour are on the rise in Europe due to the economic crisis and in turn incidents adversely impact the local socioeconomic environment.

Existing surveillance solutions installed are often positioned incorrectly and generate poor image quality unsuitable for evidential purposes. Furthermore, disparate systems coupled with non-existent communication channels, make video exploitation by law enforcement agencies nearly impossible. Effective communication and coordination between police, retailers, private security and those operating transport and other infrastructure owners is key.

The P-REACT project will design and develop a low cost surveillance platform that will ensure communication between key users with a focus on increasing the ability of on the ground police and security personnel to respond. The solution will encompass intelligent video and audio sensors to detect petty crime incidents, a cloud based monitoring, alert detection and storage platform.

Low-cost intelligent sensors (image and audio) will be installed in small business’ premises and Transport infrastructure locations. These intelligent sensors will be connected to the cloud-based Video Content Management System (VCMS), where reported incidents will be constantly monitored and responded to. An incident detected by sensors will initiate a work flow including alerting relevant Security Personnel and/ or police with the relevant video and intelligence information ensuring the appropriate response. The solution will encourage community participation in the reporting of petty crime and as such will be designed to receive information (images, video) captured by mobile smart devices or unconnected surveillance system.

Technology trends in computer vision, motion detection, video retrieval, semantic video analysis and cloud technology will be exploited.  The project will ensure that legal, ethical and end user needs are properly balanced and addressed ensuring a ‘Privacy-by-design’ solution approach.

The project will also analyse petty crime in Europe encompassing crime definitions, categorization, crime analysis, gaps and impact. The research undertaken will help the P-REACT consortium to understand the challenges related to petty crime which are experienced by the users and design a fit for purpose solution to the challenges.

The information in this site reflects only the consortium's views and the European Union is not liable for any use that may be made of the information contained herein.