Weapon Detection in Surveillance System

From many statistics, it can be assumed that the violence rate concerning guns and harmful weapons is increasing every year, becoming a challenge for law enforcement agencies to deal with this issue on time. There are many places where the crime rate caused by guns or knives is very high, especially in places where there are no gun control laws. The early detection of violent crime is of paramount importance for citizens' security. One way to prevent these situations is by detecting the presence of dangerous weapons such as handguns and knives through surveillance videos. Present surveillance and control systems still require manual monitoring and intervention. Here, we present a system of automatic detection of weapons in the video, which is appropriate for surveillance and control purposes. We have used the YOLOv3(You look only once) algorithm for the detection of weapons in real-time video. The YOLO models are end-to-end deep learning models and are well-liked because of their detection speed and accuracy. Previous methods, like region-based convolutional neural networks (R-CNN), require thousands of network evaluations to make predictions for one image which can be time-consuming and painful to optimize. It focuses on a specific area of the image and trains each component separately. A YOLO model on the other hand only passes the image once through the neural network. Since, in a realtime video, speed is of paramount importance, we have used the YOLOv3 algorithm. The dataset is trained for classifying three classes of weapons – Handgun, Knife, and Heavy Guns. Once the weapon is detected, an alert will be sent to authorities who can act accordingly and reduce the violent crimes before they take place. KeywordsWeapon detection, Surveillance system, YOLOv3 I.INTRODUCTION Security is always a main concern in every domain, due to a rise in crime rate in crowded or in suspicious lonely areas. Gun violence is a contemporary global human rights issue. Gunrelated violence threatens our most fundamental human right, the right to life. Gun violence is a daily tragedy affecting the lives of individuals around the world. More than 500 people die every day because of violence committed with firearms. The easy availability of guns always remains a big contributory factor behind the spike in crime and lawlessness. This is typically illustrated by the crime scene in America. In the US, gun culture is very strong and has historical roots. There are around 249 million guns in America and about one-third of them are handguns, which are easy to conceal. On average, each year, shootouts account for 50,000 deaths, including 12,000 murders. Research studies have also shown that household hand-guns procured for self-defence are more likely to kill family members than save their lives. In India, which has one of the strictest gun laws in the world, things are different. Obtaining weapons is a privilege rather than a constitutional right in this country (like in the US). Even for light weapons, licenses are required under the 2016 Arms Rules. However, procuring a license is a complex procedure that can take months. They are only granted after a rigorous examination, which includes background checks. It's difficult to put a figure on illegally possessed firearms, but a look at the license status of previous weapon seizures provides a good picture of how widespread the problem is. This possesses a major concern for these dangerous weapons on the security of the public. Due to the growing demand for the protection of safety, security, and personal properties, the needs and deployment of video surveillance systems can recognize and interpret the scene, and anomaly events play a vital role in intelligence monitoring.