Project description
New analysis of crowd behaviour to protect against terrorism
The increase in terrorist attacks since 2016 poses new challenges for security institutions. The attacks were orchestrated in crowded areas, including a packed stadium and a busy outdoor Christmas market. Attacks like these result in uncontrollable human behaviour such as panic. However, the high cost of hardware, as well as concerns about privacy, hinders the adoption of systems that respond to the above challenges. The EU-funded AWARE project proposes an innovative solution that analyses crowd behaviour, achieves high processing speed, and is cost-effective. It also guarantees data privacy and fulfils EU GDPR requirements. Created by HERTA, a world leading company in face recognition and crowd identification solutions, the AWARE solution can be integrated into any type of camera.
Objective
TERRORIST THREAT has increased in Europe and worldwide since Paris attacks in 2016. High density crowded places, such as critical infrastructures and public open areas, are being particularly targeted by those who instill terror. Both public and private sectors need next generation face recognition systems able to cover such large, crowded and unconstrained environments, and to massively process faces with high performance; altogether with the detection abnormal crowd behaviors such as mass panic, stampedes or bottlenecks.
However, computational requirements and highly-priced hardware are hampering these deployments. Also the analysis of faces and crowds arises increasing concerns about privacy, and it is necessary to ensure compliance with the EU General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) and other local regulations. We will bring an easy-to-install and user-friendly solution, covering cybersecurity needs and market replication.
The AWARE PROJECT provides a disruptive solution to solve major pains: (1) First solution able to analyze crowd behavior. (2) Use of an edge computing architecture and Deep Neural Network accelerators to achieve outstanding processing speed and cost-efficiency. (3) Ensuring data privacy and GDPR accomplishment.
AWARE is at TRL6, while HERTA is well-positioned worldwide as one of the few face recognition providers in crowded and unconstrained environments.
The global face recognition MARKET is becoming very competitive, and expected to increase to USD 7,76 Billion by 2022 at a CAGR of 13,8%,
The team involved in the project has over 25 years of experience in the innovation and commercialization of biometrics.
COMPETITORS: FaceFirst (USA) and NEC (Japan) solutions are slower and do not provide: crowd behavior analysis, secure databases, hardware scalability and integrated with any type of camera.
ACCUMULATED ADDITIONAL REVENUES OF 143 M€ and accumulated additional Profit of 67,9 M€ by the 3rd year; creating 30 new high-quality employments.
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencescomputer securitydata protection
- social sciencespolitical sciencespolitical transitionsterrorism
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringsensorsoptical sensors
- social scienceseconomics and businessbusiness and managementemployment
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesartificial intelligencecomputational intelligence
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-1 - SME instrument phase 1Coordinator
08037 Barcelona
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.