The NSW Police Force has claimed using artificial intelligence and machine learning helped it analyse 14,000 pieces of CCTV as part of a murder and assault investigation faster than using previous techniques.
The New South Wales Police Force is in the process of bringing its back-end into the 21st century, turning to Microsoft and its Azure cloud platform for help. According to Microsoft, the force is retiring, re-architecting, or replacing over 200 legacy systems with cloud-based systems. Part of this transformation is changing the way the force analyses CCTV footage. Labelled as the “AI/ML-infused Insights policing platform”, the system essentially speeds up the processing of data. In one example, NSW Police collected 14,000 pieces of CCTV as part of a murder and assault investigation and analysed it in a manner faster than it previously could. “The AI/ML infused Insights platform ingested this huge volume in five hours and prepared it for analysis by NSW Police Force investigators, a process that would otherwise have taken many weeks to months,” Microsoft said in a case study prepared alongside NSW Police. “Detectives were able to then within days piece together the time sequence of events, movements, and interactions of the person of interest as well as overlay this onto a geospatial platform, visualising the data for detectives and aiding in the preparation of the brief of evidence for Courts. “Leveraging Microsoft Azure cognitive technologies, machine learning, and deep learning capabilities, NSW Police has been able to train the system on image classification allowing it to interpret petabytes of CCTV footage automatically and at speed provide rapid access to leads that officers can pursue to ultimately solve crime faster.
