Multi-Modal Video Forensic Platform for Investigating Post-Terrorist Attack Scenarios

The forensic investigation of a terrorist attack poses a significant challenge to the investigative authorities, as often several thousand hours of video footage must be viewed. Large scale Video Analytic Platforms (VAP) assist law enforcement agencies (LEA) in identifying suspects and securing evidence. Current platforms focus primarily on the integration of different computer vision methods and thus are restricted to a single modality. We present a video analytic platform that integrates visual and audio analytic modules and fuses information from surveillance cameras and video uploads from eyewitnesses. Videos are analyzed according their acoustic and visual content. Specifically, Audio Event Detection is applied to index the content according to attack-specific acoustic concepts. Audio similarity search is utilized to identify similar video sequences recorded from different perspectives. Visual object detection and tracking are used to index the content according to relevant concepts. Innovative user-interface concepts are introduced to harness the full potential of the heterogeneous results of the analytical modules, allowing investigators to more quickly follow-up on leads and eyewitness reports.

Large Scale Audio-Visual Video Analytics Platform for Forensic Investigations of Terroristic Attacks

The forensic investigation of a terrorist attack poses a huge challenge to the investigative authorities, as several thousand hours of video footage need to be spotted. To assist law enforcement agencies (LEA) in identifying suspects and securing evidences, we present a platform which fuses information of surveillance cameras and video uploads from eyewitnesses. The platform integrates analytical modules for different input-modalities on a scalable architecture. Videos are analyzed according their acoustic and visual content. Specifically, Audio Event Detection is applied to index the content according to attack-specific acoustic concepts. Audio similarity search is utilized to identify similar video sequences recorded from different perspectives. Visual object detection and tracking are used to index the content according to relevant concepts. The heterogeneous results of the analytical modules are fused into a distributed index of visual and acoustic concepts to facilitate rapid start of investigations, following traits and investigating witness reports.