Manoel Barbosa da Conceição, 69, traveled from Jaguarari to Salvador to accompany a patient undergoing medical treatment, but became mentally confused and lost his way.
He lives in Jaguarari, 400 km from the capital, and was lost in Salvador for five days. Biometric identification took less than 30 minutes.
The elderly man was identified through a photograph entered by experts from the Pedro Mello Identification Institute (IIPM), part of the Technical Police Department (DPT) of Bahia, into the state's new civil identification system using digitized biometrics.
"Residents noticed a man who seemed disoriented and was living on the street. With his photo, we searched the state's biometric database and identified him very quickly, in less than 30 minutes. Soon, we were able to contact his sister, and the family was surprised and very grateful for the call on a Sunday,” said Gabriel Araújo, investigation coordinator at the Pedro Mello Identification Institute.
Identification was made possible thanks to the biometric system developed byGriaule, a Brazilian company specializing in biometric recognition, which provides document issuance technology to the government of Bahia.
Griaule's biometric system (ABIS – Automated Biometric Identification System) performs facial recognition and allows the registration and search of data used in the issuance of identity documents. This means that it is possible to perform facial and fingerprint recognition of an individual by analyzing information within a database of 14 million people, practically the entire population of the state.
“The data is stored digitally. The identification process is done by comparing, for example, a person's face photo with the state's population database, and this offers many benefits, such as identifying undocumented individuals and providing a happy ending for a person who had previously been missing,” says Thiago Ribeiro, business director at Griaule.
Griaule has been providing biometric recognition technology to the government of Bahia since July 2024. To date, 600 people have been identified by the ABIS system, according to the Pedro Mello Identification Institute.
“The combination of advanced technologies, such as artificial intelligence, encryption, and high-performance algorithms, ensures the reliability and speed of the identification process,” explains Ribeiro, from Griaule.
ABOUT GRIAULE
Griaule is the largest company in the Americas specializing in biometric recognition systems. It promotes research and innovation in partnership with Unicamp and has been developing technology that ensures the reliability of identity cards and elections for over 20 years. It has also created an investigative solution used by the Federal Police, a kind of "Brazilian CSI." The company has more than 4,000 customers in over 70 countries, including Brazil's Superior Electoral Court and the U.S. Pentagon, as well as several state governments, such as Rio Grande do Sul, Santa Catarina, and Bahia. Griaule has twice been recognized by the Financial Times as one of the 500 fastest-growing companies in the Americas, on the "America's 500 Fastest Growing Companies" list. Learn more about the companyhere.
This content was published by the news portal Diário do Sudoeste da Bahia on March 3, 2026, available at this link.
