South Wales Police in the UK uses NEC facial recognition system

NEC has provided a facial recognition system for South Wales Police in the UK through NEC Europe Ltd., which uses the company’s flagship facial recognition software platform NeoFace Watch.

The software is used for real-time CCTV surveillance, as well as still image and recorded video face search, which acts as a security measure in crowded locations, such as airports and stadiums.

The police force has deployed NeoFace Watch using CCTV cameras installed on several police vehicles. It is using the software’s real-time surveillance capability to locate persons of interest on pre-determined watchlists, including criminals, suspects, vulnerable individuals and missing persons.

“Facial recognition technology will enable us to search, scan and monitor images and video against a range of offender databases leading to faster and more accurate identification of persons of interest,” Assistant Chief Constable Richard Lewis said. “This has been borne out by the recent arrest of a 34-year old man from Cardiff who was wanted for a recall to prison. He had walked past several officers on a main street in Cardiff before he was identified by the cameras and it is probably an arrest we would not have made at any previous time.”

The South Wales Police system was deployed for the final match of the UEFA Champions League on June 3 at the National Stadium of Wales, which drew up to 170,000 football fans in Cardiff that day.

“We deployed NEC’s real-time solution, which enabled trained officers to monitor the movement of people at strategic locations in and around the city center during this massive event. It was a great success,” said ACC Lewis.

South Wales Police has become the first police force to use a real-time facial recognition system at a large-scale sporting event in the UK.

The system will also be used to cross-check still images and recorded video captured at crime scenes against roughly 500,000 images stored on its custody image database.

“NEC is very proud to be working closely with South Wales Police. We now have deployments of NeoFace Watch in 47 countries, used by a wide range of government and commercial organizations,” said Chris de Silva, head of global face recognition solutions at NEC Europe Ltd. “NEC is committed to providing valuable solutions for society and we will continue proposing innovative new solutions using face recognition, both in the UK and around the world.”

NEC was recently awarded the 2017 Frost & Sullivan Asia Pacific Integrated Biometrics Solutions for Public Safety Leadership Award.

Article Topics

biometrics  |  facial recognition  |  NEC  |  NeoFace  |  police  |  Wales