Wiley Handbook of Science and Technology for Homeland Security, 4 Volume Set

SPEECH AND VIDEO PROCESSING FOR HOMELAND SECURITY

MARK MAYBURY

Information Technology Center, The MITRE Corporation, Bedford, Massachusetts

1 SPEECH AND VIDEO FOR HOMELAND SECURITY

As articulated in the National Strategy for Homeland Security (www.whitehouse.gov/homeland/book) [1], homeland security requires effective performance of a number of primary missions such as border and transportation security and critical infrastructure protection. These activities are human intensive, both in terms of the objects of focus (e.g. citizens or foreigners crossing a border) as well as the government or contractor personnel performing these function (e.g. TSA at US airports). Automation is necessary to ensure effective, objective, and affordable operations. Speech and video processing are important technologies that promise to address some of the severe challenges of the homeland security mission. Furthermore, there is some hope that the detection of visual or acoustic anomalies (e.g. unnatural human motion and voice stress) could yield improved deception detection.

With thousands of miles of border with Mexico and Canada and 95,000 miles of shoreline, border and transportation security is a daunting challenge. Some important applications include the following:

• Video surveillance for anomalous and/or hostile behavior detection has important applications at border crossings as well as monitoring remote border areas.
• Identification and tracking of individuals using biometrics (e.g. speech, ...