Data Storage Technology Solutions Police Digital Evidence Platform Body Worn Video (BWV) is becoming common across Europe s police authorities. Early trials demonstrated significant advantages in terms of: increasing police success rates, pursuing cases through the criminal justice system, deterring potential assailants from acting against officers wearing cameras, streamlining evidence gathering and reducing the cost of managing cases through to closure. Body Worn Video is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the sheer volumes of digital evidence that police forces now need to manage and use. This document explains how the police forces can embrace BWV and easily manage the huge volumes of data generated within a broader Digital Evidence solution.
The Challenge The data storage requirements needed to support the rollout of Body Worn Video are mind-boggling: 1 1080p x 30 frames per second An enormous data challenge for the police camera X hour shift X = 2 million Police officers across Europe 3 8 X per 24 hour period X 20,000 5+ year retention X cameras across London Met Police Service alone Figures supplied by the UK Home Office show that a single police force covering just two counties in the UK is predicted to consume around 1 Petabyte over a five-year period, a typical figure for a force not covering a major metropolitan area. Two key factors to consider are: Cameras are never recording for a whole 8-hour shift. A more likely figure is close to 20 minutes. For data classed as evidential, the ability to store it long term, with full chain of custody, such that it can bear weight of evidence in court many years in the future, is a challenge that must be confronted. Not all data is retained for the long term. The Home Office assumes all data is kept for 31 days, non-evidential data is then discarded, estimated at 95% of video footage. The remaining 5% requires long-term retention, possibly until convicted subjects reach 100 years of age. As if these operational challenges were not enough, the largest additional challenge is budgets. Whilst the cameras themselves are easily justified by savings throughout the judicial process, the backend infrastructure costs can be very significant, especially against the backdrop of ever tighter financial restrictions. The ability to classify footage as evidential or non-evidential is therefore critical to the efficient management of BWV data.
The Solution To accurately classify BWV data Avnet recommends the deployment of a Digital Evidence Management Platform. This enables the tagging of files with descriptors, which can be used later to identify footage pertinent to a live case. Once identified, files can be marked as evidential and retained for the long term. This type of platform manages the entire workflow from data ingest, editing, secure sharing and collaboration, through to deletion or long-term retention. An example BWV infrastructure Body-worn cameras Digital evidence management Federated short-term storage Object based long-term storage Potential Pitfalls in a Solution The software underpinning Digital Evidence Management is sometimes provided by the camera manufacturers or by independent software vendors, with consumption models including on-premise (using commodity compute and storage) and cloud (provided as a subscription based service). Video footage is typically encrypted for security reasons, meaning there s a hard link between the software and supported cameras. This represents a degree of vendor lock-in that may lead to inflexibility for users as technology evolves. These applications may also be limited in scope to a single use case, unable to bring data under management from other sources. Digital Evidence Management software is agnostic to the underlying compute and storage technology, and therefore not equipped with the means to store data on the appropriate tier of media. During the first 31 days of storage, files need to be processed, tagged, classified, edited, viewed, analysed and shared securely, whilst also being regularly backed up for protection. Once classified as evidential, files need to be retained for the long term, shared securely on an infrequent basis and placed on highly scalable, low cost storage media that ideally doesn t require expensive data backup protection. Over a five-year period, perhaps 70% of overall storage requirements relate to this long-term archive tier, a percentage that s likely to grow over time. If data is stored on the wrong media, at best it will be more costly than necessary, at worst it may be unfit for purpose when, years later, it s called upon to carry weight of evidence in court BWV is not the only use case for an efficient long-term archive for digital evidence. Other uses include: digital forensics, crime scene photography and other related files, digital identification (e.g. fingerprints), closed circuit TV footage, reports, notes and much more. All of this data is unstructured and needs to be controlled within an evidence management framework. Unfortunately many of the options available today are point solutions; specific software managing a discrete range of evidence types. They also suffer the same limitations as the BWV example, in that long-term data will be sitting on an inappropriate tier of storage media, at inflated cost and with limited ability to search data across various applications.
A Single Platform for all Evidence The solution is a single platform for all evidence Body-worn cameras Digital forensics Crime scene Digital ID CCTV ANPR Face recognition F493 SGY Hitachi Digital Evidence Manager Reports / office documents Securely share anywhere HCP Index and search across all data WORM for security Self-managing for integrity (chain of custody) Self-healing (no back-up required) Policy based retention (compliance) 100+ year archive (seamless hardware refresh) Single instancing Multi-tenant (set policies by tenant or object) Erasure coding for space efficiency Tiered architecture for cost efficiency Native date format / open standard protocols Avnet is working closely with Hitachi Data Systems, which is pioneering the development of a Digital Evidence Platform that acts as a single platform for all evidence, avoiding all the pitfalls and challenges of less unified solutions. At the heart of Hitachi Digital Evidence Manager is a long-term data repository based on the Hitachi Content Platform (HCP). This provides a highly secure environment for long-term data retention, that s also self-healing in nature meaning data backup is not required. The solution incorporates erasure coding technology coupled with low cost, commodity based storage media. This approach reduces the cost per terabyte to levels comparable with cloud-based solutions. Indeed, as a multi-tenanted, highly scalable system, HCP is the perfect technology for Cloud Service Providers looking to offer Digital Evidence Platform-as-a-Service. It can also be offered as an on-premise or hybrid solution. The Digital Evidence Platform represents a strong foundation for an evolving set of use cases for the police, public safety and security markets. Data can be enriched by leveraging the comprehensive custom metadata features built into HCP. When combined with analytics software from Hitachi or third party vendors, files can be tagged based on facial, number plate or left object recognition, case notes and references, and a host of other sources. As the legal process progresses, HCP is a single immutable source for all evidential data, enabling secure sharing with third party agencies, whilst ensuring original files cannot be tampered with. By adding analytics, data can be filtered based on pre-determined triggers, insights are generated much faster and both human interventions (sitting staring in front of a monitor) and costs are greatly reduced, freeing up vital manpower.
Hitachi Visualisation Suite Digital Evidence Management forms part of an even broader set of operational requirements for the police: the ability to respond to incidents in real-time, to start predicting where crime hotspots might appear and to deploy resources on the ground appropriately. Hitachi Visualisation Suite meets these requirements, acting both as a hub for disparate data feeds and as a map based visualisation tool to augment existing Computer Aided Dispatch systems. Various sources of digital evidence reside in the Digital Evidence Platform, these can be analysed to provide insights and predictions, which in turn can be overlayed onto the Visualisation Suite s single-pane view. Enhancing public safety with Hitachi Visulisation Suite Public safety Computer aided dispatch Video Similar face search Radar Smart phones Satellite data Automatic Number Plate Recognition Video Analytics Big Data Analytics Evidence Management Outcomes Live situational awareness, tactical intelligence Easier collaboration between agencies Reduced labour and increased effectiveness Solution Centralised real-time analysis and visualisation Adaptable to ingest numerous data sources - Video, social media, sensors, GPS Evidence management from ingest to analysis
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