Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market › upload › files › OOSFIN ›...

Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market

Testimonials of past projects :

opportunities and pitfalls

dr. ir. Patrick De Smet,

NICC, Belgium

[email protected]

DISCLAIMER

• This is just all “IMMHO”/ “FWIW” / “€0.02” !! • i.e., apply scaling as you see fit; my experience:

– 10 years at Ghent University – 10 years at NICC/INCC – Mostly technical R&D work (thank you boss!!) – Limited (!) EU experience:

COST (proposal, project lead; oral EC review committee presentation but not selected), project lead: MP2011 S-FIVE (see what follows), etc.

– Future: Asgard (H2020) – ENFSI Digital Imaging Working Group (DIWG):

Steering Committee member (mea culpa: no submission of the draft DIWG “R&D White paper” while reaching for a “near academic” level)

– ENFSI FITWG: R&D White paper reviewer, participant to MP2012 FITWG BPM update

• Most of what follows: based on MP 2011 S-FIVE project (Jan. 2013-Dec. 2015):

ENFSI Monopoly 2011 Project

Standardization of Forensic Image and Video Enhancement

(S-FIVE, http://s-five.eu/)

Patrick De Smet, NICC, Belgium

[email protected]

The S-FIVE project is a project funded by the European Commission through the Prevention of and Fight against Crime Programme European Commission - Directorate-General Home Affairs, implementing the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI) Monopoly 2011 programme "Improving Forensic Methodologies Across Europe"(IFMAE; EC Project Title; Agreement Number: HOME/2011/ISEC/MO/4000002384 ).

http://s-five.eu/

http://s-five.eu/

http://s-five.eu/

Introduction: forensic image and video enhancement

21.03.2016 Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market 4

• Today cameras are everywhere (CCTV/DVR, smartphone, bodycam)

• Record various types of crimes

• Important source for immediate forensic or tactical investigation; who, when, what, where, how did something happen ?

• Enhancement vs. identification

Introduction: forensic image and video enhancement


Most often this image material has very poor image quality:

• Bad camera distance • Low framerates • Strong compression

(blocking artefacts) • …

6

S-FIVE Project Overview

• S-FIVE: "Standardization of Forensic Image and Video Enhancement"

• Topic: Improvement of quality of image/video data of objects at the macroscopic level (e.g., "super-resolution" software for CCTV video, deblur, …)

Introduction: forensic image and video enhancement (FIVE)

• EAFS2015: conference theme:

• Pushing beyond boundaries

• But: where’s the boundary?

• What may, can, could, should, must, shall FIVE achieve?

• Thus: practical R&D needed

• Some of the obtained project results actually point to some important R&D related issues


Do not despair:



Project had 5 WorkPackages (WPs):

• WP1:

– Define full technical scope

– Survey of current practice, tools, issues,...

• WP2: Central Repository:

– State-of-the-Art overview (literature, software)

– Composition of Ring Test/Collaborative Exercise; re-recording/collecting video data

• WP3: Best Practice Manual (BPM)

• WP4: Ring Test/Collaborative exercise (RT/CE) + international workshop

• WP5: Project management, evaluation, dissemination, …



• NICC, BE: Patrick De Smet • NICC, BE: Bart Nys • NICC, BE: Inge Buys • BKA, DE: Stefan Ott • CAST, UK: Neil Cohen • CAST, UK: Luke Scarth • CPCS, CY: Sotiris Pavlides • NFI, NL: Zeno Geradts and

Arnout Ruifrok • MPS, UK: Simon C. Latham

WP1, WP2, WP4

WP5

WP1

WP3

WP2, WP3

WP2, WP3

WP3

WP4

WP2

Main interests

and/or responsibilities

WP1: tech. scope, survey

WP2: CR: SotA, compose RT/CE

WP3: BPM

WP4: RT/CE + int. workshop

WP5: Project management

• Original planning: organize one survey, informing about all information that could be of use for the project or in general for obtaining a snapshot of current FIVE activities and (best) practices

• Planning changed after few iterations, i.e.: survey split into two parts;

• Survey I: outreach and obtaining information about most pressing technical issues

21.03.2016 10

S-FIVE Surveys


11

• Survey I goal: prepare for the Ring Test / Collaborative Exercise (CE)

• Questions: contact information, no. cases/exhibits, source material, types of enhancement requests, image resolution enhancement, image quality problems and defects, composition of the RT/CE, additional training material, other comments (21 questions, 9 HTML pages)

S-FIVE Survey I

Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market 21.03.2016

09.09.2015 ENFSI Monopoly 2011 S-FIVE:Introduction and Project Overview 12

Qn19: Please rank the image enhancement technical issues that you

would like to see included in training material.

Analysis: of ranking 1 only

Similar results were obtained for other

related technical questions(!) ;

meaning: see next slide

S-FIVE Survey I

21.03.2016 Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market 13 13

Main points related to R&D:

• Purple: “super-resolution”:

– discussion about the definition – academia: “we studied/solved this problem 15 years ago”

(no, they did not (compression!), real forensic vs. chosen academic test data sets?!, etc.)

• Blue: getting the data at best quality from the recording device (which may be a proprietary black box!); cf. you should not run around collecting DNA coughing and sneezing all over the place, thus: badly needed: similar demands on / procedures for digital image evidence collection

Result (?): very important problems for forensic image enhancement casework, yet, very difficult to obtain R&D funding for these seemingly basic problems …? Unless: - Future EC “tendering projects” (here’s a problem, who can provide a solution?) ? - Forensic practitioners could play a more active role (lobbying with/towards

funding bodies, actively participate to project reviewer panels and proposals, …?) - etc? i.e., discussion needed!

S-FIVE Survey I

09.09.2015 14

S-FIVE Survey II: Questions about hardware/software tools

1. image/video acquisition, 2. demultiplexing images of multiple cameras

(temporal demux, or XY-image demux), 3. aspect ratio correction, 4. deinterlacing, 5. stabilization, 6. lighting compensation, 7. lens distortion, 8. denoising, 9. suppression of compression artefacts, 10. focus deblurring, 11. motion deblurring, 12. super-resolution, multi-frame

averaging/fusion, 13. presentation or playing of material in court, 14. reporting and archiving on digital media, etc. 15. other image/video enhancement tasks

1. Usage freq.

2. Ease of Use

3. Qual. Result

4. Doc./Man.

5. Train

6. Qual. Sup.

7. Tuning time

8. Other criteria

For each of these issues

a participant can optionally

provide information about:

Survey II had a lot of questions! (too many vs. thorough), but …

S-FIVE Survey II : ENFSI (DIWG)

• (Q70) Which activities should ENFSI develop in the future? (4 answers)

– stimulate more collaboration

– Organise proficiency tests to compare the results of different laboratories. Develop tools that are not "proprietary black boxes" for image processing in order to ensure control over any operations performed.

– grupos de trabajo

15 Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market 21.03.2016

Is this “mere implementation”, or, “practical/real-life R&D”?!

Some interesting answers to open questions were


• (Q71-A) Did your laboratory ever attend an ENFSI Digital Imaging Working Group (DIWG) meeting?

– Don’t know: 3

– No: 10

– Yes: 13

• (Q71-C) What were or are the most important reasons for (a representative of) your laboratory to attend the ENFSI DIWG?



• (Q72) Which activities should ENFSI DIWG develop in the future (in or outside of annual meetings; including R&D, special topic meetings or specific trainings, etc.)?

– Develop some official training and certification like LEVA does in US.

– More special trainings

– special topic meetings, specific trainings, BMP guidelines

– Training, collecting Best Practices

– In my opinion workshops may be a very interesting way to provide practical, useful knowledge to apply later at the home lab.



• (Q72) Which activities should ENFSI DIWG develop in the future (in or outside of annual meetings; including R&D, special topic meetings or specific trainings, etc.)?

– We think that DIWG could perform training activities in order to teach the experts some techniques and to verify and certify that an expert is capable to apply an specific technique under the ENFSI DIWG standards.

– Facilitate collaborative R&D to develop appropriate forensic tools Organise proficiency tests Organise special topic meeting with a reduced set of participants

– I+D, suprresolucion, grupos de trabajo


19

Lessons learned (management)

• S-FIVE: project without any staff cost

• "EC contractual" no. working days: exceeded by at least 3 persons

• Planning changed several times, but work & results exceed initial proposal

• tip for future MP project:

– add in dedicated staff (so: budget),

– plan for sufficient no. meetings where discussion, brainstorming and work can get done (obviously depends on type of work to be undertaken)

Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market 21.03.2016

21.03.2016 20

Lessons learned (management)

Forensic R&D projects may not only revolve around the technical work: • you may need to worry about legal issues;

(C) on (derived) images, disclaimers, privacy, …

• privacy versus collaborative exercises (CE) / proficiency testing: Will anonymity get you more participants? Will a CE be treated as a normal case?

• handling ( (R&D and IPR) competition between) companies

• communication & project management overhead; MP: participants+ENFSI Secretariat+MP manager, applying all “dense” EC rules (e.g. travel & DSA), may require considerable attention and re- explanation (if project

participants care is OK, others (uninformed) may be involved in handling their admin., etc.)


Thank you Richard!

Conclusions/Outlook • Surveys could/should be considered R&D as they can be an

interesting source for identifying real but “hidden” R&D needs and opportunities

• Other S-FIVE project WPs (not discussed in detail above) also gave interesting R&D ideas and material for discussion

• Think about inputs/real efforts to be made: no. people (that make detailed promises on work) no. meetings (to collaborate on-site)

• Think internally: who may be waiting for who? (I am currently out of office, I am working on casework backlog …)

• (Online) document collaboration may be time consuming • Think about EWG dissemination, publication, websites, …

This may require a lot of time especially: • Consider post-funding output and long term archiving efforts



Conclusions/Outlook

• Ask for sufficient:

no. funded people and (management) commitment on no. work days (to be) contributed (in both proposal and project; 15 days = “zero” );

• which translates to: • Plea to management:

do not forget about us (guys/girls doing the R&D work); • Running and participating to R&D projects is not a side-dish;

i.e., please consider allowing persons to really develop and work full-time on R&D ideas and projects…

• EC projects are legally binding contracts!

Conclusions/Outlook

• What does forensic R&D mean? • For ENFSI: a wide variety of (type of) members, EWGs…

they all may have very different needs/ideas e.g., software interface vs. new theoretical algorithm/method

• Full R&D project or case-by-case (casework) driven? Global view or EWG (sub)subgroup driven?

• Who will / do we want to do the R&D work? Only “DIY”, or with academia and other research institutes, EWGs or EWG members, other .gov, industry (.com), …?

• In the end this is all about people, i.e., staff and thus … €€€?

• Or: R&D without funding, is this possible/sensible? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OaiSHcHM0PA

24

So it’s Back to the Future?!

Can we get more staff please?

You’re aiming at what exactly?!

Ehhh…???

So it’s a Never Ending Story?

Open issues:

Questions and discussion…

25

Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market › upload › files › OOSFIN ›...

Documents

Transcript of Financing R&D in the European Forensic Science Market › upload › files › OOSFIN ›...