ICT
© Gerd Altmann

EAB outlines key H2020 objectives

As input to the preliminary consultations surrounding the theme of Trustworthy ICT within Horizon 2020, the European Association for Biometrics (EAB) has outlined several key research priorities and objectives.

The document argues that while research in the field of biometrics technologies has been on-going for many years, important research questions remain unanswered and now more than ever require our urgent attention.

It states: “Given the multidisciplinary nature of biometric systems and deployments, and given the large range of scenarios for the application of biometrics, on-going and multidisciplinary research must continue to ensure that the promises of these technologies are realised.

“Research can be divided into generic methods for improving performance, and on application-specific techniques and methodologies. In the latter it is essential that developers and users of biometric systems (including industry, academia and governmental organisations) must have the means to independently evaluate the performance and effectiveness of these systems. This calls for an effort to make available open-source algorithms, sensors and databases as well as for standardised evaluation protocols and facilities.”

Included in the research objectives that, in the view of EAB, need to be addressed in Horizon 2020 are metrics to quantify the robustness of biometric capture devices against presentation attacks; research on countermeasures against presentation attacks; and the expression of countermeasures in assurance levels according to common criteria (all of which fall under the heading of Counter-spoofing and Liveness Detection).

The EAB has also made proposals for the areas of privacy protection and impact assessments, sample quality metrics and measurements, sample quality metrics and measurements; usability and user-awareness; openness, interoperability, modularity, and extendibility; mobile biometrics, cloud computing, and universal access; and new border control systems, amongst others.