Protecting the EuRopean terrItory from organised enVironmentAl crime through inteLLigent threat detectiON tools

Project Information

PERIVALLON

Grant agreement ID: 101073952

DOI

10.3030/101073952

Project closed

EC signature date 6 September 2022

Start date 1 December 2022

End date 30 November 2025

Funded under

• Civil Security for Society

Total cost

€ 5 379 572,50

EU contribution

€ 4 670 653,75

Coordinated by

ETRA INVESTIGACION Y DESARROLLO SA
Spain

Periodic Reporting for period 2 - PERIVALLON (Protecting the EuRopean terrItory from organised enVironmentAl crimethrough inteLLigent threat detectiON tools)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Organised environmental crime is the third most lucrative criminal business in the world and the largest source of financing for non-state armed groups, as reported by INTERPOL. Its transnational dimension, involving legal and illegal business from multiple jurisdictions, the large range of waste products as well as the limited financial, technological and human resources allocated to law enforcement make it a high-profit-low-risk crime. Consequences involve devastating effects on society, reducing market opportunities for legitimate businesses, lowering people’s quality of life in cities and towns affected, and destroying natural habitats.
The ambition of PERIVALLON is to combat environmental crime by: (i) Delivering an Environmental Crime Observatory aiming to provide an improved and comprehensive intelligence picture of organised environmental crime, (ii) Developing an environmental crime detection and investigation platform at the forefront of technological innovation. This will improve the capacities of Police Authorities, Border Guards, and National and Regional Authorities by means of extensive training, hands-on experience, joint exercises, and testing of key technologies in relevant environments, boosting the uptake of PERIVALLON results and ultimately assisting Member States with the implementation of the new Environmental Crime Directive.
The project specifically tackles waste-related crimes as the top priority concern of practitioners. Intentional dumping of polluting substances, illegal disposal of (hazardous) waste, (cross-border) illegal trafficking of waste, and illegal trade of hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) are examples of criminal activities prioritised by the end-users. Such forms of crime can be challenging to detect and difficult to investigate by conventional means, highlighting the need for more sophisticated solutions enabling remote identification, evidence collection, analysis and correlation of the information obtained. To this aim, the PERIVALLON platform integrates a collection of components to a single-entry point delivered to end-users that exploits the latest advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) in the fields of geospatial intelligence, remote sensing, online monitoring of marketplaces and open data sources, and multimodal analytics.

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

During the second reporting period, PERIVALLON fully completed its planned milestones and deliverables. Not only did it accomplish a set of significant technical outcomes, completing the work started during the first reporting period – namely the delivery of the 2nd and final platform prototype-, but also implemented its 11 pilot demonstrations following the plan previously established, strengthened environmental crime intelligence picture through the final delivery of the Environmental Crime Observatory, defined and characterized its Key Exploitable Results (KERs), identified uptake opportunities (some of them already ongoing), delivered a set of policy recommendations, finalised the legal and ethical compliance framework, as well as conducted an ambitious comprehensive series of communication and dissemination activities, reaching a wide audience and supporting the growth and engagement of its Stakeholder Network.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Building on these achievements, the PERIVALLON project is set to create significant impact and advance the frontiers of environmental crime detection. The integrated PERIVALLON platform and its 28 components will help Police Authorities, Border Guards, and National/Regional Authorities combat criminal activities with qualified staff and better resources, including lawful court-proof collection of evidence. Improved coordination between European and national authorities will be enabled by the Secure Information Sharing and Evidence Exchange module and enhanced protocols and tools for tackling transnational illegal trafficking. The results will connect stakeholders across countries and jurisdictions, enabling secure cooperation with international actors.
AI-based geospatial intelligence, online monitoring, risk assessment, and pattern recognition tools will enhance practitioners' ability to identify and prevent organised crime networks, especially in detecting illegal waste storage sites easier, faster, and more cost-effectively.
On top of providing new tools to fight environmental crime, the project’s results will contribute to scientific research, furthering knowledge and technical advancement. This can already be seen by the number of scientific publications and datasets published so far. An important aspect of the project is its economic impact, related to efficiency gains (cost reduction and/or increased productivity) from the PERIVALLON platform.
These results will also positively impact society by protecting the environment and transferring knowledge. The project’s dissemination and communication actions engage both practitioners and the general population, aiming to raise awareness of environmental crimes.

Tool: Envorinmental Crime Monitoring Center

PERIVALLON report cover page

Training activity with end users

One of the pilot demos (PUC1 in Italy)

Consortium group photo

PERIVALLON concept diagram

Joint workshop PERIVALLON - EMERITUS

Example of dissemination outputs

PERIVALLON Final event