From city streets to the savanna, high-tech system listens for gunshots

[Robb]

ShotSpotter's network of audio sensors listens constantly for gunshots and provides police fast alerts when they happen

It's 10am on a bright, sunny morning in Newark, California, but in the windowless control room at ShotSpotter the lights are dimmed. Two operators are watching banks of displays connected to a network of acoustic sensors located in cities across the US.

An alarm sounds on one computer and a red alert box pops up: "Backfire. View incident?" it asks the operator. At her console, the operator can listen to recordings collected from several sensors located within a few hundred meters of the noise, which the computer has classified as a car backfiring.

The operators here have listened to thousands of such recordings and, to her trained ears, the sound -- more of a pop than the roaring bang we're used to hearing in movies -- is in fact a gunshot. She clicks a button to reclassify the sound and within seconds a report with a location of the shot is despatched to the Oakland Police Department.

Oakland is one of 74 cities across the U.S. that subscribe to the ShotSpotter service, provided by Newark-based SST. Other customers include Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Boston, Washington and San Francisco.

The alerts they get pinpoint the location of the gunfire to within 10 meters, indicate the number of shots fired, take a guess at the type of firearm used and, if the shot was fired from a moving vehicle, provide the speed and direction of travel....

Read More: http://www.pcworld.idg.com.au/article/520783/from_city_streets_savanna_high-tech_system_listens_gunshots/