Researchers from UTS and the Australian Federal Police have collaborated to explore the use of machine learning methods to classify and catalogue images relating to illicit drug operations.
Fig. 1. Example images. Supplied by study authors.
Ever-increasing volumes, diversity and complexity of digital data from crime scenes, such as CCTV footage, digital photos, emails and documents, create significant challenges for forensic investigators who need to catalogue, label and search this information.
In Australia, the Australian Federal Police (AFP) has well over 300,000 images relating to various illicit drug operations alone. These images capture a huge amount of information, from the physical appearance of the drugs to names and addresses on parcels.
As part of an ARC Linkage project on drug intelligence, researchers from UTS and the AFP have collaborated to explore the use of two different machine learning methods to automatically classify and catalogue images of drug-related offences, to improve the speed and accuracy of the process, and enhance workflows.
Read the full story in UTS Newsroom: Enlisting AI to improve crime scene image classification