Automated detection of firearms and knives in a CCTV image

Abstract

Closed circuit television systems (CCTV) are becoming more and more popular and are being deployed in many offices, housing estates and in most public spaces. Monitoring systems have been implemented in many European and American cities. This makes for an enormous load for the CCTV operators, as the number of camera views a single operator can monitor is limited by human factors. In this paper, we focus on the task of automated detection and recognition of dangerous situations for CCTV systems. We propose algorithms that are able to alert the human operator when a firearm or knife is visible in the image. We have focused on limiting the number of false alarms in order to allow for a real-life application of the system. The specificity and sensitivity of the knife detection are significantly better than others published recently. We have also managed to propose a version of a firearm detection algorithm that offers a near-zero rate of false alarms. We have shown that it is possible to create a system that is capable of an early warning in a dangerous situation, which may lead to faster and more effective response times and a reduction in the number of potential victims.