Facial recognition in India helps find missing children
According to data from the Ministry of development of Women and Children in India, between 2012 and 2017, more than 240,000 children disappear in the Asian country. Many of those infants end up in child care institutions, but it is very difficult to locate their families because there is no department to compare the photographs of the missing children with those taken when they arrive at the care institutions.
As a background, the Ministry had created a nationwide online database known as 'TrackChild', with the aim of solving thegrowing children loss issue. in this site, people could see photos of missing children and founded ones. Also everybody could see all the police information, wich could be used by other agencies and even citizens.
This tool was also usefull to upload reports of missing infants but, despite being a good digital implement, became a problem for institutions because of the accumulation of photographs and, at the end, they could not reduce the rate of missing persons in the country.
Fortunately, a new hope came to light to reunite many of these families and t's a about a facial recognition technology. in recent days an organizacion dedicated to child welfare called 'Bachpan Bachao Andolan' developed a software based on a Face Recognition System (FRS), which automatically compares the photographs of lost children uploaded in TrackChild with those of childrens who arrives at hospitals, care homes and other institutions. Also, new databases can be added to extend its reach.
Although the bureaucratic problems did not allow its implementation immediately and new Dlhi High Court had to intervene, the platform was presented to the police departmet and it was successfully tested. Once approved, the site received around 45,000 photografs from the TrackChild database. The most surprising thing is that, in just 4 days, 2,930 children were identified. So, the operation was a total success.
The platfotm is still in experimental phase, but everythig seems that it will be established as a tool of the Indian Police Department, as it will become an important elemento to facilitate this kind of investigations in India. Before starting to function officially, it still must overcome a great number of legal obstacles, because it manages thounsands of minonrs photos and, at the end, it is a private institution.
It is worth noting that the institution hasn't given details of the algorithm's operation because it is not willing to just give away all its technology, developed after years and years of investment and hard work.
