" AmberView Designed to Aid in the Recovery of Missing Children"

AmberView

AmberView is a program designed to mass broadcast a digital 3D image of a missing/abducted child to law enforcement, media, and private sectors via the World Wide Web within minutes of an official Amber Alert.

• A child is reported missing every 40 seconds
• 74% of the abducted children who are murdered are dead within three hours of the abduction
• Time is an abducted child's GREATEST enemy

What is AmberView?

The Amber View Project is a pilot biometrics program under development by the West Virginia High Technology Consortium (WVHTC) Foundation in Fairmont, West Virginia and is designed to aid in the recovery of missing or abducted children. This coordinated program will work in collaboration with the state and national Amber Alert programs and will demonstrate the ability to mass broadcast a digital, three-dimensional (3D) facial image of a missing child to law enforcement officials, media organizations, the private sector and other sources within minutes of an official Amber Alert.

Written descriptions of the child help the recovery by quickly broadcasting information and a picture to regional authorities and to regional television networks. What is currently missing is the ability to instantaneously mass broadcast a high-resolution picture of the child to law enforcement officials and the media within minutes of the abduction. AmberView will fill this void.

Parental approval is required before a high resolution digital image of a child’s face is scanned and recorded. The 3D format allows the image to be enlarged and viewed from various angles, making positive identification easier. Once scanned, this biometric data will be stored on a server in a secure database located at the WVHTC. Since the data is stored in a digital file, it can be quickly transmitted electronically to a vast array of recipients. Within minutes of notification, thousands of people in a broad geographical area will be on the alert to find the missing child.

AmberView is a highly emotional program with enormous potential, and we are very motivated to bring biometric technology to assist in returning missing and abducted children to the safety of their families.

For current information, visit the AmberView web site or contact the Pendleton County Board of Education. Specific information concerning the implementation of this project in the schol system will be posted here when it becomes available.