Appian Technology PLC

Policing

Talon for Policing, Surveillance and Counter-terrorism

'ALPR enables us to turn the tables on the criminals. Instead of the criminals creating fear, i want to make them fearful of using the roads. And if they do venture out, i want them to know that ALPR increases significantly the chances that they will identified, stopped and arrested...'

— Hazel Blears, Minister of State for Crime reduction, Policing and Community Safety

Appian are currently engaged in the provision of ALPR to a number of international police forces and government agencies. Appian is the only ALPR supplier to all 43 police forces in England and Wales through the Spectrum project.

The high accuracy of the Talon ALPR system makes Appian a first choice for those customers who require a high performance ALPR capability on multi-carriageway roads, whether in transportable, mobile or fixed site installations. Talon is also the chosen system in 10 UK port installations, major airports, the Docklands, highways, CCTV systems, in various police mobile and transportable configurations and in the City of London's Ring of Steel. The Ring-of-Steel is independently tested on a regular basis and must maintain performance levels in excess of 95%.

Talon Spectrum application: sophisticated, user friendly software, for fixed, mobile and transportable ALPR applications

Spectrum is the Talon application software for Policing and Surveillance applications, allowing local and national databases to be interrogated based on the license plate read for detection and identification of stolen and wanted vehicles.

When an entry is stored to the database, an image of the license plate from the recognition camera is stored with the recognition. The system can be configured to show an additional larger image to enable the operator to verify the colour and vehicle type.

Hot Lists

A number of different types of hot list can be used, namely:

• PNC Extract - an extract of all vehicles of interest from the Police National Computer.
• Local Hot lists - Hot lists of up to 50,000 entries can be created, edited and imported.
• Bulk-loaded Hot lists - large Hot lists of more than 50,000 entries can be imported.

Talon can also be connected to a remote hot list database (e.g. the Police National Computer) and perform live checks for each plate against the remote database. This connection can use an arbitrary barer, e.g. a GSM/GPRS/WIFI modem.

If a GSM/GPRS modem is fitted, the system can send SMS pager messages for each hot list hit. The GSM modem can also be used to provide over-the-air updates to the hot list databases.

Spectrum Back Office Software

The Spectrum Back Office Software is a standalone database application designed specifically to interface to the Police mobile software. The software provides an interface into the Police National Computer via third party hardware and software.