Abstract:
One of the primary concerns of any government is to provide security of lives and properties to her citizens. Poor management of armouries by the security agencies has been identified as a major contributing factor to insecurity in Nigeria. Inadequacies in management and record keeping of armoury weapons have led to smuggling and theft of weapons by the security agents thereby rechanneling these weapons for criminal activities. Also expired explosive weapons are not identified and removed on time leading to armoury explosions. The Weaponry Tracking and Information System was designed to tackle the inadequacies in armoury management by the Nigeria security agencies. The system maintains a database of the security agents as well as the weapons in the armouries. The system was designed using object oriented hypermedia methodology and implemented using Personal Homepage Pre-processor (PHP), java script, visual basic 6.0 and MySQL as the database. A biometric system was integrated within the system and the entire system was linked to a mobile telecommunication system for real-time SMS alerts of possible weapon expiration or maintenance. The system verifies and authenticates personnel via fingerprint recognition during weapon signing, thereby providing an effective means of tracking weapons found at a crime scene.
Keywords: Weaponry, Security Personnel, Biometric System, Tracking, Real-time
