The CCTV system is touted to help save many lives with AI
helping in analysing behaviour |
Is the young woman in the summer dress just admiring the
view off the bridge? That is the question South Korean researchers and the
emergency services are working to answer using artificial intelligence to
detect and prevent suicide attempts.
In this case it is one of the researchers demonstrating how
hard it can be for human surveillance teams to tell.
But the AI system they are developing has been learning
patterns of behavior by analyzing data from cameras, sensors and the dispatch
records of rescue services since April 2020, Seoul Institute of Technology said
on Wednesday.
Based on information from hours of CCTV footage and
assessing details such as the hesitation of the person, the AI can then
forecast a hazardous situation and immediately alert rescue teams, principal
researcher Kim Jun-chul said.
“We believe the new CCTV will enable our crews to detect the
cases a bit faster and help us head to a call more promptly,” Kim Hyeong-gil,
who is in charge of the Yeouido Water Rescue Brigade, told Reuters as he
monitored real-time footage from bridges on Seoul’s Han River.
Kim’s team have been working with the researchers to come up
with the technology that his crew and the Seoul Fire and Disaster Headquarters
will be piloting from October.
Their work cannot come quickly enough.
South Korea, with a population of 52 million people in 2019,
had the highest suicide rate in the OECD. More than 13,700 people took their
own lives the same year, government data showed.
Nearly 500 suicide attempts are reported on 27 bridges over
the nearly 500 km (300 miles) long Han River every year, the city said.
The number of rescue dispatches surged about 30 percent in
2020 compared to the year before and many of the attempts were made by the
people in their 20s and 30s as the coronavirus pandemic brought greater
economic hardship and increased the battle for jobs, the rescue brigade’s Kim
said.
“The system learns the footage itself, which can bring about improved results by greatly reducing false alarms,” the principal researcher said.
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