Citation

Ellis T. Traffic Eng. Control 2002; 43(11): 416-419.

Affiliation

Enforcement Interest Group, PIPS Technology, United Kingdom

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Hemming Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

At the time of writing, the news is full of the threat of terrorism, as well as discussions about the use of our police force and how best to tackle crime. Automatic License Plate Recognition or ALPR (often referred to in the UK as Automatic Number Plate Recognition or ANPR) has been around for a number of years. However it is only recently that it has turned from being an unreliable and difficult-to-use technology, based on unwieldy and fragile hardware that needs to be set up by scientists, to an easy-to-use, robust technology that can operate reliably for many years and that can be set up by users. The use of ALPR is a powerful tool in enforcing the law in many different areas, and what follows is a discussion of the technology involved, and how this relates to different enforcement applications.