Dubai Police’s Video-Based Multiple Biometrics System has been deployed in over 3000 cases in 2022, the chief of the forensic video and image division told DefSec Middle East.
The system developed by Dubai Police’s electronic forensics department helps identify people in any type of video evidence available, whether it comes from CCTV, social media, or other digital assets, said Lieutenant Colonel Dr Hamad Al Awar, Chief of video and image forensics at Dubai Police’s Department of Forensics and Criminology.
Deployed in 2016, the system was used in 3,022 crimes in 2022 alone.
It identifies suspects through gait patterns, which is the pattern of physical movements by an individual, facial prints, ear shapes, hand shapes, and body measurements.
“We needed to develop other biometrics to be used, the five developed are the face, ears, and then you have gait movement as well as the individual body measurements which looks at the ratio of arms, legs to everything,” Lt Col Al Awar said.
“We even use hand shapes in the identification process,” he added.
Lt Col Al Awar said that during the pandemic the technology was extremely useful in identifying criminals.
The development of the system, the chief said, was done in-house due to the technology not being in the market.
“Now with the widespread use of videos and CCTV, you get to see a person committing a crime to live on the piece of evidence.
“We started to develop a system that makes the gap closer between DNA and video evidence, we identified the five physical biometrics and we took whatever was the state-of-the-art technology available to identify every single biometric,” he said.
“If we could not find tech available in the market, of course, we started to develop it in-house alongside other researchers from around the world. I can say very proudly right now that all the five metrics have been developed in-house and the system became very crucial for us, especially during the pandemic,” he said.
Genome forensics
Genome forensics may be utilised on the ground by the end of 2023 Dubai Police said at the World Police Summit in Dubai.
The Genome Project at Dubai Police is based on a Ph.D. study undertaken by Major Mohammed Al Marri, in 2020 to isolate and identify Middle Eastern genetic variants.
The study, according to First Lieutenant Mohammed Khalid Al Rahma, biology and DNA expert at the Dubai Police Department of Forensics and Criminology, enabled the utilisation of the data to identify characteristics of suspects through the DNA collected at a crime scene.
“There are 23 million genetic variants recorded globally, the study identified 5 million specific to the Middle East region,” he said.
The project, Lt Al Rahma said, enables forensic investigators to narrow down the suspect pool significantly by identifying traits, ethnicity, and origin of the suspect.
Follow us on
