Kolkata: Kolkata Police has installed 62 special CCTVs with Face Recognition System (FRS) in 20 places in the last year to trace missing children.
Facial recognition is an advanced technology that helps in discerning and identifying human faces from an image or video.
A system employed to perform facial recognition uses biometrics to map facial features from photos or videos. It compares this information with a large database of recorded faces to find a correct match.
Facial recognition is touted to be one of the top three methods of biometric recognition to identify people by measuring some aspect of individual physiology or anatomy.
According to police sources, FRS cameras were bought and installed with an aim to stop children from getting trafficked or to trace missing children.
Each such camera costs Rs 30000 to Rs 50000. Senior officials of the Kolkata Police informed that these cameras were installed at 20 different locations, including Sealdah Railway Station, Shyambaazar five-point crossing, Rashbehari Avenue crossing and Howrah Bridge.
The number of such cameras will be increased in the future.
“Our aim is to locate any missing child. To trace them, we put their photographs in the FRS camera database. If the missing child’s movement gets caught in the system, the system will inform us of the location. It helps us chart out the routes,” said a senior Kolkata Police official.
At present, more than 3000 CCTVs are installed across the city, including the FRS, Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and special long-range cameras. Soon, about 7000 more cameras will be installed for which the tender process has been started. The long-range cameras are used as and when needed.
Kolkata Police own five long-range cameras which can record video up to three-kilometre distance in a straight line. These cameras are used during special programmes where VVIPs are present. Each of those cameras costs about Rs 5 lakh.