Cities often host large events. In recent years, for example, Cardiff has played host to diverse events including the 2014 international NATO Summit and the 2016 UEFA Champions League Final, as well as numerous smaller events requiring extensive police and security operations. Policing such events requires very good situational awareness (SA): an ability to keep track of what is happening in real-time. Effective SA involves making use of data collected in real-time from multiple sources - for example, CCTV, car number-plate recognition systems, automatic facial recognition - together with reports from officers stationed around the city.

The Crime & Security Research Institute at Cardiff is doing research in SA using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) tools that can process information feeds such as video, audio and text. The aim of this project is to build a dashboard in the form of a Web interface that can integrate multiple tools developed by the Institute to produce a "concept demonstrator" of how AI, ML and human-computer interaction (HCI) can support SA for large events in a city. The interface will link the multiple tools and "feeds" - created by our team as Web services - into a map-based interactive visualisation. The audience for this demonstrator would include our police partners and potentially other agencies concerned with the security of urban areas.

The project doesn’t require specific background knowledge beyond Web interface development, but you’ll need to have an interest in HCI as well as AI and ML; you won't be building new AI / ML systems but you will need to be able to integrate existing ones. The intended outcome of the project is a demonstration system so you need to be willing to produce and document a piece of software that our team can then take forward. The project will be supported by PhD students and researchers in the Crime & Security Research Institute DAIS group: https://www.csri-dais.org