Demographic Variation in the Performance of Biometric Systems: Insights Gained from Large-Scale Scenario Testing

Since 2014, DHS S&T has performed scenario testing of biometric systems, to measure their performance across diverse demographic groups.  Since starting its public biometric technology rally evaluations in 2018, S&T has tested 151 combinations of commercial face acquisition systems and matching algorithms. This presentation describes how data collected from these large scale scenario tests have addressed demographic effects in face recognition technologies, explains the role of image acquisition in shaping demographic differences in face recognition systems, and summarizes the implications of demographic differences in face recognition system performance for different use-cases.