In the light of the bombing in New Delhi, I thought of steering my thoughts (actually seeded by Manisha) to a solution to the important problem of monitoring an over populous city. If we look at it and analyze, we could compare it to a typical search problem. Excessive amounts of data, limited time to process and high level of accuracy.
If we could design a search system, so potent and so intelligent so that it detects and notifies anything/anyone that it thinks is worth a mention, and integrate it with new media to flash it over the cell phones and billboards around the area it is detected in, we would have an amazing (though ideal) system. And trust me, unlike all ideal systems, this is do-able.
Getting into the technicalities of the issue, question 1 is.... what do we already have in place? A terrorist database with photographs and other details, a police force (though not adequate in volumes to monitor and act, both at the same time)
So taking all that data, and first of all digitizing it (which I believe the government would already have done) is the way to start it off. Once the data is digitized, it has to be preprocessed (to prepare it for indexing), exactly the way all data is treated for search engines.
Once we structure the data and order it accordingly(which includes, and primarily includes images), we are ready to index it. Now image indexing is the pivotal thing here as the images are immense and numerous.
What after we are ready with the indexed data? (which happens to be a lot of images).
We need to build an image search engine. Ok.. So how does it differ from a Google image search or a Yahoo image search? Unlike those search engines which are a function of text and not RGB values this has to be one that matches an image for an image ( and similar images).
In other words, this runs a search on an input 'image' and not a keyword search to pull up all images tagged with the keyword.
This is the most important part as it involves bit stream matches, needs an algorithm that knows how to filter out noise over time (so that its noise removal works better with each passing day). Also understands that a person could wear a helmet/scarf and still would have to be detected.
Also, there could be voice matchers that match the voice to make sure that the person is the same and build a mechanism to learn about human voice modulations and variations.
There's a lot more that the search engine could work on and handle (I'm sure more people thinking on it would get better ideas..at least more ideas.. on the issue)
Another question, which again is a pivotal one, would a human match such stuff? as in.. would the input to the system come from a human being? I say... could be.. but rarely... as mostly.... it would have to be integrated with cameras.. 'Intelligent Video Surveillance' cameras. With the current age of technology and canon having its amazing multiple face detection technology, we are almost there on this front. An integration of the technology with the frames (on a sampled basis as all could not be handled) from video cameras could perform a search for faces using the already defined engine. This search would be an ongoing process and as soon as something fishy or known is detected by the system, it could raise an alarm.
We could then integrate it with video devices in police stations and control rooms to flash the captured and detected 'may-be terrorist images' which go in as a lead to the existing police forces.
This I believe would help the country , the police force and the law enforcement agencies like nothing else(at least as far as the current issue is concerned).
There's a need for better technology by the government agencies, with the terrorism taking a new age format that is highly dependent on technology.
Hope someone reads this.. or thinks about it.. someone who has the power for this implementation at national level.
--
P.S : Comments would be appreciated!
If we could design a search system, so potent and so intelligent so that it detects and notifies anything/anyone that it thinks is worth a mention, and integrate it with new media to flash it over the cell phones and billboards around the area it is detected in, we would have an amazing (though ideal) system. And trust me, unlike all ideal systems, this is do-able.
Getting into the technicalities of the issue, question 1 is.... what do we already have in place? A terrorist database with photographs and other details, a police force (though not adequate in volumes to monitor and act, both at the same time)
So taking all that data, and first of all digitizing it (which I believe the government would already have done) is the way to start it off. Once the data is digitized, it has to be preprocessed (to prepare it for indexing), exactly the way all data is treated for search engines.
Once we structure the data and order it accordingly(which includes, and primarily includes images), we are ready to index it. Now image indexing is the pivotal thing here as the images are immense and numerous.
What after we are ready with the indexed data? (which happens to be a lot of images).
We need to build an image search engine. Ok.. So how does it differ from a Google image search or a Yahoo image search? Unlike those search engines which are a function of text and not RGB values this has to be one that matches an image for an image ( and similar images).
In other words, this runs a search on an input 'image' and not a keyword search to pull up all images tagged with the keyword.
This is the most important part as it involves bit stream matches, needs an algorithm that knows how to filter out noise over time (so that its noise removal works better with each passing day). Also understands that a person could wear a helmet/scarf and still would have to be detected.
Also, there could be voice matchers that match the voice to make sure that the person is the same and build a mechanism to learn about human voice modulations and variations.
There's a lot more that the search engine could work on and handle (I'm sure more people thinking on it would get better ideas..at least more ideas.. on the issue)
Another question, which again is a pivotal one, would a human match such stuff? as in.. would the input to the system come from a human being? I say... could be.. but rarely... as mostly.... it would have to be integrated with cameras.. 'Intelligent Video Surveillance' cameras. With the current age of technology and canon having its amazing multiple face detection technology, we are almost there on this front. An integration of the technology with the frames (on a sampled basis as all could not be handled) from video cameras could perform a search for faces using the already defined engine. This search would be an ongoing process and as soon as something fishy or known is detected by the system, it could raise an alarm.
We could then integrate it with video devices in police stations and control rooms to flash the captured and detected 'may-be terrorist images' which go in as a lead to the existing police forces.
This I believe would help the country , the police force and the law enforcement agencies like nothing else(at least as far as the current issue is concerned).
There's a need for better technology by the government agencies, with the terrorism taking a new age format that is highly dependent on technology.
Hope someone reads this.. or thinks about it.. someone who has the power for this implementation at national level.
--
P.S : Comments would be appreciated!
