Detecting organised crime
Organised crime is expanding its methods and range of activities, while also becoming less localised and more virtual. European authorities believe that combating such crime requires a strategic monitoring and warning system. The EU-funded 'Early pursuit against organized crime using environmental scanning, the law and intelligence systems' (EPOOLICE) project aims to develop such a system. The prototype is expected to enable detection of organised crime and to predict its evolution. The latter requires an environmental scanning system, incorporating promising technologies developed by project partners. One example is semantic filtering, meaning to gather and consolidate information from a wide variety of sources. The project's 19 partners will work together to the end of 2015. Team members started by developing a European network of relevant security professionals. Work also determined the needs, expectations and constraints of end users. Other preliminary work involved study of various legal and ethical implications of the proposed system. The group refined its threat assessment methodology, supporting the environmental scanning system. Hence, the consortium developed two dynamic scenarios: trafficking of both cocaine and humans. An initial proposal for the platform architecture has been completed and submitted to the consortium for feedback. The team further completed a preliminary description for the environmental knowledge repository (EKR), as a common and flexible model for representing environmental domain knowledge. The researchers completed an initial analysis regarding the feasibility of promoting the EKR model as standard, including the relevant options. Tools for environmental scanning and data acquisition have been completed. The Battle Management Language was adapted and extended for use as pivot language for the English case. The project selected certain operational software tools for information fusion and data analysis, and provided first-version fusion models. The tools are intended to automatically detect crime and suspicious anomalies. Other developed tools help with visualisation, situation assessment and sentiment analysis. Finally, the prototype system was demonstrated. The EPOOLICE project has to date developed, tested and demonstrated a prototype system for automated detection of crime. The system is expected to improve police effectiveness in fighting crime.
Keywords
Organised crime, criminal activities, warning system, environmental scanning, intelligence systems
