Parents’ worst nightmare could soon be a thing of the past

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New technology is making great strides to protect children…

 

Imagine…

 

You are out for the day. You’re having fun with your family. 

 

Momentarily you are distracted… 

 

You turn your back on your child for just a second. And then when you turn back again… they are gone!

 

You can’t see them anywhere. Where did they go? When did it get so busy in here?

 

It’s every parent’s worst nightmare! And, if you have ever had this happen to you, you’ll remember your panic and growing feelings of desperation, rapidly heading towards hysteria, as you frantically scan the crowds straining your eyes to spot your missing child. 

 

Every second seems like a minute. Every minute an eternity. And in the back of your mind, you are aware that, if something has happened to them, the first few minutes are the best chance you’ll have of finding them unharmed.

 

Thanks to new technology, parents and their children can be spared such trauma in crowded spaces, and child safety dramatically improved.

 

Soon, if your child goes missing you can simply pull up their picture on your phone, email, text or WhatsApp it to Security and have the entire building scanned to find your child and reunite you.

 

Once your child’s image is placed on Vix Vizion’s Imagus facial recognition system, all live cameras at the venue go to work to find them in a matter of seconds. Imagus can also be used to review CCTV footage across many cameras, allowing the scanning of huge areas in the blink of an eye. 

 

Such use of “good face recognition” technology (as opposed to “bad face recognition”) can help avoid prolonged stress for parents and potentially a more serious situation if the child goes missing from the store or shopping centre. However, this is not the only way in which face recognition is being used to protect families around the world.

 

In the UK, the Police have been using face recognition to protect children at concerts and similar events. Recent research showed that at pop concerts aimed at teens, paedophiles would hide in plain sight. Mixing with the young audience, other parents would assume that the predators were there with their children in a crowd. Nothing could have been further from the truth. And the most chilling imagery was that of parents dropping off their kids to the venue believing that once they are inside, in a supervised environment, they were safe. Actually, all they have done is unwittingly deliver them into the hands of evil predators.

 

Police research into historical data has revealed that as many as 40 to 50 convicted paedophiles have simultaneously attend concerts aimed at young people, like those held in stadia and arena. By using face recognition software, is intolerable situation can be addressed. In addition to their usual surveillance roles, the stadium CCTV cameras can be used to spot known criminals and apprehend them. 

 

Manchester Arena was of course the scene of the deplorable terrorist attack carried out in May 2017 in which many innocent people died or suffered life changing injuries. Face recognition can spot known terrorists or terrorist sympathisers/people of interest and prevent them entering the arena. Such technology can make it very difficult for terror groups to operate covertly and gives the authorities the ability to continually scan for either known criminals entering public spaces or indeed unknown people, without the requisite security clearance to allow them to access secure areas – such as power plants or high security areas – even if they bypass physical security. 

 

These are examples of how face recognition can be a force for good in Australia. As Simon Herron, CEO, Vix Vizion says… “We're changing the conversation around face recognition - using great new Australian technology to reduce harm and improve safety.”