Periodic Reporting for period 1 - PERIVALLON (Protecting the EuRopean terrItory from organised enVironmentAl crimethrough inteLLigent threat detectiON tools)
Période du rapport: 2022-12-01 au 2024-05-31
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.
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.
First of all, strong project foundations were established together with Police Authorities, Border Guards and National/Regional Authorities, who participated in the co-creation of four Pilot Use Cases (PUCs), 76 Functional Requirements, 25 Non-Functional Requirements and 13 Security Requirements. To address their needs, an integrated platform architecture with 28 components, involving more than 130 technical requirements, was designed. In parallel to this, the Environmental Crime Observatory provided an improved intelligence picture of organised environmental crime by preliminarily examining case studies in six different countries. The outcomes of this examination will be continuously mapped to the project’s expected results.
The above-mentioned achievements supported the development of 16 AI methods -with more than five relative datasets created for training and evaluation-, which become part of the components delivered in the first PERIVALLON integrated platform prototype. This prototype will be demonstrated and evaluated by the practitioners and end-users in the coming months, with 11 pilot demonstrations planned: four in Italy, one in Greece, one in Sweden, one in Belgium, two in Romania and two transnationals.
In addition, waste codes were gathered and initially categorized based on the European Works Council definition, resulting in 105 distinct waste codes that could potentially be identified using the detection tools being developed in the PERIVALLON project.
A key part of the achievements in this period is the involvement of external experts. Seven members of the Advisory Board, three members of the Independent Ethics Board and various European institutions contributed to the interim results.
The above-mentioned achievements supported the development of 16 AI methods -with more than five relative datasets created for training and evaluation-, which become part of the components delivered in the first PERIVALLON integrated platform prototype. This prototype will be demonstrated and evaluated by the practitioners and end-users in the coming months, with 11 pilot demonstrations planned: four in Italy, one in Greece, one in Sweden, one in Belgium, two in Romania and two transnationals.
In addition, waste codes were gathered and initially categorized based on the European Works Council definition, resulting in 105 distinct waste codes that could potentially be identified using the detection tools being developed in the PERIVALLON project.
A key part of the achievements in this period is the involvement of external experts. Seven members of the Advisory Board, three members of the Independent Ethics Board and various European institutions contributed to the interim results.
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.
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.