Completion of the EU-4NSEEK project

George Azzopardi was the leader of a work package (WP) in the recently completed project 4NSEEK “Forensic Against Sexual Exploitation of Children”, which was co-financed by the EU through the financing program Internal Security Fund - Police (ISFP-2017-AG-CYBER call). The project concerned the implementation of a tool with several AI-based functionalities that help police officers in their investigations. His WP concerned the development of two sets of image-focused algorithms: 1) identify which camera model/device was used for given images/videos, and 2) determine whether a given set of images/videos were captured by the same device or not. Together with him, the work in his WP was mainly completed by the PhD student Guru Bennabhaktula with the assistance by the former Masters student Derrick Timmerman, and in collaboration with Prof. Dimka Karastoyanova and Prof. Enrique Alegre (University of Leon).

The EU Projects Management Office has just published the final report where they conclude that "the execution of the project has been remarkable" and that there was "100% achievement of the expected objectives." Moreover, the 4NSEEK tool developed by the entire consortium has already been requested by more than 250 police units from more than 50 countries, with more than 100 police officers already using it, including Europol.