The United States is seeing rising tensions between its law enforcement officers and the citizens they are charged to protect, with multiple reports of clashes between the police and citizens over recent months causing public commotion. In Taiwan, the police force is facing similar circumstances with comparable levels of severity and urgency. Systems and solutions with advanced information technologies that leverage cloud computing and big data analytics for crime prevention and investigation have become a highly anticipated remedy and are setting a global trend as well.
Drawing on the European Union's experience, for example, the European Commission launched the Future Internet Public-Private Partnership Program (FI-PPP) as part of the European Safe City project in 2011, which engages both the public and private sectors to build a pan-Europe Internet technology platform and infrastructure. The program has already proceeded into its third phase (September 2014 to September 2016) wherein the industry ecosystem is under construction to support large-scale deployment and is engaging participation of private businesses. According to an announcement made in 2016, 400 million euros have been devoted to the program which selected six European cities for pilot implementation of the innovative developments and applications much needed by various aspects of the communities.
Major applications include video analysis and application, real-time positioning, path tracking, information security, ad-hoc networking construction for emergency response, decision support system and smartphone integration. Massive investments in the technologies to access and analyze video images and to integrate communication and information security have drawn attention to preventive policing and helped in the development of early prediction and prevention measures.
The function of video integration, on which American and European governments have placed a strong emphasis, are also focusing on expanding the capabilities for searching video database, dispatching services, tracking vehicles and building a high efficiency police information service network. Investigations on high-tech and Internet crimes in Taiwan are still being conducted mainly by the Criminal Investigation Bureau and local police officers in charge of Internet crimes at the municipal level. Investigations on high-tech and Internet crimes by first-line police officers remain at an early development stage.
VERETOS sets an example for smart mobile video systems for police patrol cars
In the US, police have made major investments in police equipment, particularly in the deployment of cloud platforms for first-line law enforcement, which makes efficient use of large amounts of video data. Getac's VERETOS smart mobile video system is an in-vehicle surveillance system for patrol cars that was developed in response to the changes in US policing strategies to take homeland security, terrorism prevention, social governance and public order into consideration and to leverage the operations of intelligence centers gathering large amounts of information resources. Part of Police Departments in South Carolina and Minnesota have entered into contracts to deploy VERETOS, which has the potential to become available at nearly 20,000 police stations and in more than 200,000 police cars across America. With this track record, Getac believes VERETOS will also benefit first-line Taiwan police forces.
Video images captured by VERETOS during police duty are saved on the cloud for proper evidence management and are further processed using big data analytics so that the massive video footages can be transformed into useful intelligence. VERETOS, equipped on police cars, combines hardware and software solutions including the main system, control panel and multiple in-vehicle high definition video cameras.
VERETOS has a camera design that takes the limited space inside a police car into consideration. The camera on the rear view mirror at the front seat can captures the front view and the camera aimed at the back can keep track of the suspect's activities in the back seat. There is also a camera mounted on top of the vehicle equipped with automatic license plate identification to help police officers detect suspicious vehicles during patrol duty. The dedicated SaaS cloud platform enables direct access to terabytes of video data recording crime scenes in digital formats and gathers and analyzes all types of crime data, thereby establishing evidence for cracking cases. This greatly assists in scientific investigation and enhances active forensic data collection.
In addition, VERETOS also provides a wearable camera mounted on a police officer's chest to expand the scope of evidence collection so that the officer can continue to capture video when he or she has to get out of the car to conduct an investigation. This not only serves the purpose of documenting the investigation and ensuring the police officer's safety but also protects the suspect. VERETOS offers a complete smart policing solution that closely supports first-line law enforcement officers with the body-worn cameras.
As large amounts of photographs and video footages get uploaded to the cloud data center at incredible speeds, this is when the advantages of VERETOS can be fully exploited to achieve benefits on efficiencies and costs in data processing and management. By leveraging the establishment of a cloud data center and information security technologies, VERETOS enables a high level of security and ease-to-use system for regional police stations.
VERETOS uses a highly secure browser as its main control interface for searching, marking and sharing digital evidence and for providing real-time streaming video, drawings of crime scenes and markings of police car locations. Emphasis is also placed on the availability of automatic cloud remote backup systems to guarantee safety of important video data. Most of all, the collected video data is combined with coordinates and historical information including the people, time, location and objects involved in the incident, which upon analysis become critical data helping the police solve crimes. VERETOS effectively raises patrol efficiency, enhances precinct security and analyzes criminal behavior. This is the main reason why the U.S. police have introduced the system as they need a more powerful and active system to help them work more efficiently.
James Hwang, Chairman of Getac, commented that VERETOS not only sets an important example for rugged computers but also establishes a benchmark for police IT systems. It is also a new business model marking a critical turning point in Getac's transformation. Adoption of VERETOS systems is growing in the US with future expansion to Europe in the plan. VERETOS uses Microsoft's Azure cloud computing service platform and mainstream Intel processors. By collaborating with leading technological players in cloud computing, Getac holds bigger advantages in its expansion into the cloud solution market. Getac looks forward to joining forces with more cloud service ecosystem partners to create additional value and capture more opportunities worldwide.
Getac VERETOS smart mobile video system in operation inside a police car
Getac VERETOS smart mobile video system and product portfolio
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