Cyber-Forensic Review of Human Footprint and Gait for Personal Identification

TL;DR

This paper reviews the potential of human footprints and gait analysis as innovative biometric methods for personal identification, especially in forensic and security contexts, emphasizing their relevance in criminal investigations and terrorism prevention.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of footprint and gait biometrics, highlighting their advantages and potential applications in forensic and security fields.

Findings

Footprint biometrics can uniquely identify individuals.

Gait analysis offers behavioral insights for suspect profiling.

These methods are promising alternatives in forensic investigations.

Abstract

The human footprint is having a unique set of ridges unmatched by any other human being, and therefore it can be used in different identity documents for example birth certificate, Indian biometric identification system AADHAR card, driving license, PAN card, and passport. There are many instances of the crime scene where an accused must walk around and left the footwear impressions as well as barefoot prints and therefore, it is very crucial to recovering the footprints from identifying the criminals. Footprint-based biometric is a considerably newer technique for personal identification. Fingerprints, retina, iris and face recognition are the methods most useful for attendance record of the person. This time the world is facing the problem of global terrorism. It is challenging to identify the terrorist because they are living as regular as the citizens do. Their soft target includes the industries of special interests such as defence, silicon and nanotechnology chip manufacturing units, pharmacy sectors. They pretend themselves as religious persons, so temples and other holy places, even in markets is in their targets. These are the places where one can obtain their footprints quickly. The gait itself is sufficient to predict the behaviour of the suspects. The present research is driven to identify the usefulness of footprint and gait as an alternative to personal identification.