R&D 100 winner of the day: FOVEA (Forensic Video Exploitation and Analysis) Tool Suite

The FOVEA tool suite, from MIT Lincoln Laboratory, addresses a major capability gap in video surveillance systems: efficient forensic review and investigation. Once integrated with a video management system, the analytics can be applied to any camera feed without any additional hardware or need for preprocessing the video data.  FOVEA acts as a force-multiplier for security operators by reducing workload and mental burden. The tools provide capabilities that are not available in any commercial systems, such as new methods of navigating between cameras, or creating composite videos from multiple camera views. The tools are flexible and can be used on many scene types and for unpredictable tasks, unlike commercial solutions that are generally limited to detection of people and vehicles. FOVEA has been deployed in operational environments at several mass transit systems, including Washington, DC. Ongoing evaluation at these sites has resulted in faster alarm resolution and investigation. Additionally, laboratory experiments have shown significant time savings ranging from 2-300x. Complex tasks that usually take hours can be completed on the order of minutes when using the FOVEA tool suite.