The EU funded VICTORIA project

Video recordings have become a major source of evidence for investigations involving crime and terrorism. However, analysis of these recordings is in most cases conducted manually. Given the increasing amount of data each case brings with it, the VICTORIA project will create a Video Analysis Platform to make analysing digital evidence more efficient.

The VICTORIA project has 14 partners and is coordinated by the French IDEMIA Identity & Security. Research on the project begun in May 2017 and will be concluded by April 2020. The project was funded by the EU (H2020).

For more information on the project you can click here.

Video material is becoming increasingly crucial for investigators of crimes or terrorism. However, given the spread of smartphones and other devices the amount of video material about an incident or event has significantly grown.

As these trends appear to continue the current practices are too resource intensive to handle the huge and steadily increasing volume of videos that need to be analysed. According to the VICTORIA project, the majority of video investigations are still carried out manually by the LEA officers.

For instance, in the 2012 case of M. Merah in France, 35 terabytes of video footage was collected. This resulted in 10.000 hours of recordings, a massive task to analyse manually.

Thus, the VICTORIA project aims to develop a ethical and legally compliant video analysis platform to accelerate the video evaluation process. The project estimates that its platform could improve video analysis by a factor of 15 to 100, depending on the case.

The Project has defined 5 main objectives:

Develop a TRL-6 video analysis technology

Increase significantly the usability of video analysis tools for legal investigations

Create a business model and ecosystem allowing the video investigation field to grow and prospect

Train LEA investigators in the use of advanced video investigation tools

Ensure that the VICTORIA tools are in line with EU Legal-Ethical-Privacy rules

By doing so VICTORIA will not only increase the speed of video related investigations but also reduce their costs. Moreover, the application could be particularly valuable in an event, where the perpetrator is still at large but could be identified via video material to aid his/her speedy arrest. Additionally, VICTORIA could also help to extract more information from the videos available.

Until the 25th of October the project can be visited at the IEEE Vis or at the 16-18th December in London at the ICDP2019.

Note: This Article is based on the VICTORIA project´s website and a related EU article.

Author: Niklas Hamann

Sources

European Commission (2019). “Video analysis for Investigation of Criminal and TerrORIst Activities” In: Cordis Available at: https://cordis.europa.eu/project/rcn/210226/factsheet/en

The VICTORIA project (2019). The VICTORIA PROJECT Available at: https://www.victoria-project.eu/

Keywords

Video, Project, H2020