Geo-location, vehicle routes and convoy detection

Locate vehicles, objects or people in a camera surveilled area simply by drawing on screen with the mouse.

One of the latest Intelion features is an invaluable help when looking for specific vehicles, people or objects in an area surveyed by cameras. Intelion can now locate any type of identification on a map to facilitate quick searches in well-defined geographic areas.

In many police cases or investigations, it is important to locate and position certain objects, vehicles or people in the area of a crime at a certain point in time. Intelion now offers this GIS functionality, which allows to filter out what has happened in specific areas of a map, provided those areas contain security/traffic cameras or other types of sensors that Intelion can read. Simply drawing a shape on a map can yield all the identifications in the marked area.

Detections in and crossings through an area

All video sources in Intelion can be tagged with geographical positioning coordinates, to know where that video (or any other signal or sensor) is located. All of that information is stored as metadata in Intelion and can be recalled or used at any point. This is the basis of the geographical area filters. Simply open the map and draw a shape over an area that is of interest. Intelion will find all the identifications that were made in that area over the specified time period and draw them in place for easy viewing. Zoom and pan functionalities allow to concentrate on specific areas of the map and all the identifications are grouped together to simplify the investigation.

To pinpoint the result with more precision, it is possible not only to establish a start and end date to limit the detections, but also a timeframe. Thus it’s feasible to find a certain number plate in the surroundings of a crime between, for example, 2 and 4 pm.

Intelion allows drawing shapes on a map to find the detections made inside the marked area.

Vehicle routes

The routes functionality is a useful tool to track a vehicles’ progress through time.

The route functionality is a great help to establish the path a certain vehicle (or person, or object) has taken in a certain timeframe. Intelion allows to search (for example) for a number plate and then draws the route that vehicle has taken, based on the positive identifications made by the traffic cameras connected to the system, drawing a route taking into account the camera position and the time when the identification was made, thus being able to plot the route that vehicle has taken. This is valuable information to position a certain car or person with regards to a crime in the area, or to find out if specific (suspect) vehicles drive the same route over and over again to find out patterns or operating areas.

The platform not only allows specifying concrete information like a number plate, but also something more generic like a car color, type, make, etc. for those cases in which the number plate is not known.

Convoy detection

The third functionality is the detection of convoys. In Intelion, a “convoy” is defined as “a group of vehicles that make the same route together at multiple points in time”. This is a very powerful tool to find relationships between suspect vehicles, if they do the same route over and over again. Or to find patterns in group movements, meetings, etc.

Intelion can analyze hundreds of video sources to find matching pairs of vehicles and thus establish relationships between persons that, at first sight, have nothing to do with each other.

If the same vehicles are detected multiple times over the same route, they are forming a convoy.

Watch Intelion in action

See how Intelion’s geo-search, route and convoy detection works.

In this short video Intelion shows how to find vehicles in specific geographic areas, freely defined by drawing on a map, and how it can detect the routes that a specific vehicle takes, based on the individual detections made in different security and traffic cameras. The system is also capable of detection the repeated association of different vehicles, taking the same route, to tag them as a convoy.

Future enhancements & Conclusion

With the same technology Intelion has already integrated, the next step will be the inclusion of more AI Analyzers into the geographic detection system. Faces, objects and other similar elements are on the product roadmap, but the possibilities are endless to allow the easy location of anything in a specific geographic area, based on the identifications the AI systems have made.

The geo-detection, route and convoy functionality is a powerful tool to speed up investigations, as it helps establishing relationships between suspects, to find out specific modi operandi that repeat in time or to place suspects at or around the scene of a crime at the time it was commited.