Forensic Law Enforcement

One of the greatest challenges law enforcement faces is identifying a person based on forensic evidence. Face recognition technology serves as an invaluable tool to address that need, allowing voluminous databases of face-prints to be checked and sorted into an ordered list of individuals that look most similar to the person law enforcement is attempting to identify.

Emirates FR offers a comprehensive infrastructure that allows millions of face-prints to be searched in seconds. That infrastructure includes,

• Forensic Workstations to extract images from a variety of media (e.g. image files, videos and printed photographs) for comparison against one or more face-print databases;
• Bespoke face-print adjustment tools to allow the very best images to be isolated for use in a search. Tools include, "digital de-rotation of facial images" and "exaggerated expression removal"; and
• Face Recognition Engines to carry out fast-searches against a database of face-prints and report a ranked gallery of persons deemed to look most similar to the enquiry image.

Searches of face-print databases using Emirates FR Forensic Face Recognition Engines can be completed in seconds: for example, a search of 15-million face-prints can be completed in less than 1-seconds! All Emirates FR Forensic Face Recognition Infrastructures are fault tolerant and fully scalable.

Pre-Emptive Surveillance

To meet national security needs, responsible Governments are deploying unified national infrastructures to proactively protect critical infrastructure and key assets vital to public health and safety, national security, governance, economy and public confidence.

For a unified national infrastructure to be truly effective it must be pre-emptive; meaning it must support immediate detection of threats and, wherever possible, prevent them from occurring!

Video surveillance has traditionally been used as the mainstay for such infrastructures. Unfortunately, video surveillance relies largely on operators to scan banks of displays to detect issues. With research indicating that the ability of even a well-motivated operator to concentrate on a display drops by 90% after just 20-minutes, use of video surveillance on its own is insufficient for creating an effective unified national infrastructure.

Building on expensive experiences creating face recognition systems that use live video to detect, track and identify persons in challenging real-world settings, Emirates FR has created a technology infrastructure capable of delivering pre-emptive surveillance using digital IP cameras offering sufficient quality and resolution to enable effective visual and forensic assessment of video in both real-time and playback; including performing face recognition; "intelligent analytics technology" to process real-time and recalled video and audio to automatically detect threats; and analytics generated alerts to advise and activate appropriate response resources.

Emirates FR Pre-Emptive Surveillance technology and integrated solutions ensure that critical infrastructure and key assets can finally be protected in a manner where potential threats are immediately detected and, wherever possible, prevented!

Airport Services

Airport Operators are continuously called upon to accommodate a voluminous passenger traffic increase in a manner that ensures facilitation and enhancement of the overall passenger experience within the highest standards of safety and security. Accommodation must be underpinned by a comprehensive strategic vision: one that is global in scope, innovative in approach and enabled by efficient business processes and advanced technologies. Overall, Operators must ensure that a balance is realised between passenger facilitation and safety and security.

A constant challenge to achieving that balance is confirming a passenger’s true identity. Use of biometric technology has become synonymous with achieving that confirmation.

Emirates FR believes that facial recognition should be the "primary" identity confirmation technology used at airports. That belief is rooted in the fact that the overwhelming majority of international air travellers - currently estimated to be over 635,000,000 – carry the globally standardised ePassport; each of which carries a facial biometric (face-print) of the Rightful Holder and machine-readable information vital to confirming the authenticity of the passport and all data carried. That belief is strengthened and focused by the realisation that persons carrying an ePassport are, in effect, enrolled in a “common global passenger clearance and facilitation program"; one that can be used to great advantage by an Airport Operator.

While Operators realise significant indirect benefits from ePassport-enabled border clearance, the existence of a globally standardised machine-readable credential (the ePassport) and retrievable facial biometric sets the stage for introduction of a broad range of additional machine/biometric assisted airport services; each of which is designed to meet specific operational and/or commercial needs of the airport. These services, which are underpinned by the ability to identify the passenger unobtrusively and in largely uncontrolled settings via face recognition, enable Airport Operators to introduce new and innovative ways to realize a new level of secure value exchange with their clients.

All of the major passenger movement steps - check-in, baggage processing, Immigration exit control, security access, security screening, boarding, Immigration entry control and baggage collection – can realize benefits. All can be facilitated!

Emirates FR offers these benefits as innovative, self-funded (revenue-generating) services through a uniqueBuild-Support-Renew (BSR) business partnershipwith the Airport Operator.

The Operator realises a new significant sustainable source of annual revenue linked directly to the airport’s ever increasing passenger traffic volume.

Secure Value Exchange

Most business transactions involve an exchange in which each party gives up and receives something of value.

To improve provision, many businesses are automating the delivery of services. Some are using self-service machines/kiosks (for example, Airport Check-In Kiosks, Immigration eGates and Bank ATMs), while others are using software applications to connect with personal and laptop computers, tablets and mobile devices (e.g. mobile phones) held by a recipient.

To secure the exchange, service providers are looking to biometric technology to confirm that the "rightful recipient" is in fact requesting/receiving service delivery. Equally, the "rightful recipient" is seeking assurance that only they are able to receive the service delivery.

While all biometrics have the potential for application, only face recognition is the most facilitating: it does not require a portion of the business process to be dedicated to capturing the biometric, nor does it require the person to overtly participate. Face biometric capture can be accomplished while other aspects of the business process are taking place. Most important, face recognition findings can be confirmed and adjudicated by an untrained human; something the other biometrics fail to support.

Having worked in the demanding areas of capture and processing of facial biometrics for border clearance and forensic surveillance, Emirates FR has developed a suite of technologies that enable service providers to achieve secure value exchange when using self-service machines/kiosks.