Rapid video assessment for monitoring testing facility fraud

Abstract

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a procedure for finding unusual patterns in accredited tests using a rapid processing method for analyzing video records. The procedure uses the temporal differencing technique for object tracking and considers only frames not identified as statistically redundant. Design/methodology/approach An accreditation organization is responsible for accrediting facilities to undertake testing and calibration activities. Periodically, such organizations evaluate accredited testing facilities. These evaluations could use video records and photographs of the tests performed by the facility to judge their conformity to technical requirements. To validate the proposed procedure, a real-world data set with video records from accredited testing facilities in the field of vehicle safety in Brazil was used. The processing time of this proposed procedure was compared with the time needed to process the video records in a traditional fashion. Findings With an appropriate threshold value, the proposed procedure could successfully identify video records of fraudulent services. Processing time was faster than when a traditional method was employed. Originality/value Manually evaluating video records is time consuming and tedious. This paper proposes a procedure to rapidly find unusual patterns in videos of accredited tests with a minimum of manual effort.