London borough upgrades its crime-fighting vision system

17 Jun 2002

The London borough of Newham in the UK has been awarded a grant to upgrade its anti-crime system, which is based on closed-circuit television (CCTV) and facial recognition software.

The borough employs the FaceIt facial recognition software developed by Visionics Corp, of Jersey City, NJ. FaceIt employs Local Feature Analysis to represent facial images in terms of local statistically derived building blocks. The borough's 250 CCTV cameras transmit images of faces into a computer. The system compares the images against a database of known criminals and discards any that do not match, protecting the privacy of the public. If a face does match one in the database, the computer automatically notifies the police.

The borough first installed the system in November 1998 and reported a 40 percent drop in crime in the area, including a 79 percent decrease in residential burglaries. "It will go down as a serious implementation of optical technology and intelligence software," remarked Joseph Atick, the president and CEO of Visionics. "It's just dazzling the law enforcement community. Here is a technology that's a breakthrough in science that's leading to a breakthrough in reducing crimes."

The USD 33 million grant will allow Newham to upgrade the system to the most recent FaceIt version, which takes into consideration changes in pose, expression and lighting conditions. The hardware and peripherals to support the facial recognition will also be updated.