A national database of child abuse images is being created by UK law enforcers and investigators to help police forces identify victims and bring those responsible to justice.
The Child Abuse Image Database (CAID) will be accessible to 46 police forces, as well as UK law enforcement agencies, and will act as a central respository for data from cases relating to child sex abuse.
It is designed to enable crime fighters to share case data, and flag the existence of new images that need to be investigated.
Given the digital nature of the material, many copies of the same image may exist online or be uncovered on devices seized as part of investigations.
In some cases, a police force in one part of the country may already have ascertained the source of it and identified the victim involved, and this will be recorded in CAID to prevent other forces from duplicating their investigative efforts.
It is also hoped the database will aid international efforts to arrest the spread of online child abuse images globally, and make it easier for cross-continent investigations to take place.
As such, it will play a central role in Project Vic, which is an international campaign aimed at classifying images collected for investigation by police forces across the globe.
The first phase of the Home Office-backed project is being rolled out by tech firms NetClean, Hubstream and L-3 ASA, who was awarded the via the G-Cloud procurement framework.
It is hoped the database will be up and running before the end of 2014.
Netclean's contribution to the project includes a central server that will be used to store images that can be easily retrieved by stakeholders for investigative purposes. Hubstream, meanwhile, makes products that can catalogue this data.
Policing Minister Mike Penning described the creation of the database as a "watershed moment" in the Government's work to clampdown on online child abuse.
"Never before will law enforcement agencies have been so well equipped to prevent abuse in the first place, detect it where it is happening, identify and protect victims and bring offenders to justice," he said.
"The outcomes will be life changing, and in some cases life saving. That is how important this database is."
