Karlstad University, Sweden, leads new EU-project against Child Sexual Abuse Material

[idw]

The development of computer technology and computer communication during the last decades has lead to many benefits to socitety. However, it has also provided new means for the spreading of child sexual abuse images and videos. When police makes seizures in this kind of investigations the examination of the seized material typically involves a considerable amount of manual labour, which consumes time and resources for the police.





To improve the ability of the police to handle large amounts of imges and video in this type of investigations, Karlstad University, Sweden, has initiated the FIVES project. FIVES stands for Forensic Image and Video Examination Support, and the project aims to develop a "tool set" that supports this particular kind of investigations. The project is a cooperation between academia, industry and police authorities.


The project is lead by Karlstad University, Sweden, and the other partners are the Dutch national police (KLPD), NetClean Technologies AB, Bulgarian Academy of Science, the German Research Institute for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI), and the Belgian federal police (FCCU). In addition, a number of national and international police authorities are also participating in different reference boards.


- Handling and evaluating large amounts of seized image and video material related to child sexual abuse is a challenge and a growing problem, so we welcome this effort to create new tools in this area, says Chief Inspector Christophe Monniez from the Belgian Federal Police.


The software developed in the project will partly build on software developed by the Dutch and Belgian police. New functionality stemming from academic research on computer forensics and image and video processing will also be implemented.


- The system design has a modular approach which simplifies the adaptation of the system to the needs of different police forces.The various national police forces differ in their organizational structure, their workflow and legal framework. This means that flexibilty and adaptability are important aspects, says Johan Garcia, project manager and researcher at Karlstad University, Sweden.


Around 20 persons will be actively working in the project which runs for two years.
Financing is provided by the European Union and the partners.


Johan Garcia,Associate professor in Computer Science, phone: +54 700 17 89 or mobile +0708-57 25 30, e-mail: johan.garcia@kau.se


Pressofficer Christina Knowles; christina.knowles@kau.se; +46-70887 22 47


Weitere Informationen:
- http://fives.kau.se/ further information about FIVES

Quelle: idw