The ARIEN’s innovation action is organised into eight work packages (WPs). WP1 coordinates all the project activities and monitors its evolution.
An analysis of the social, ethical, legal and privacy aspects is conducted in WP2 to ensure the development of a framework compliant with EU laws and regulations in the field of drugs trafficking and completely respectful of human rights. To this end, guidelines, and checklists for applying legal and ethical The study conducted in the context of WP3 on criminal landscape and modus operandi of the entire drug supply chain, supported the analysis of the technological gaps of the security practitioners and their needs in fighting drug trafficking. This work package performed the elicitation of the user requirements and the definition of the use cases. Technical requirements have been collected and formalised in close collaboration with the representatives of LEAs, BGAs and Postal Service involved in the project. Such collaboration was also essential to specify the architectural design of the ARIEN Framework.
The development of the ARIEN framework, carried out in WP4, focused to enhance tools for discovering and monitoring both physical places (including parcels at border control) and online sources, including Surface and Dark web and social media, to discover and trace activities related to illegal drug cultivation, illegal production, and trafficking. Specific dark markets and web sites have been targeted by the ARIEN’s investigators to support the use cases selected for the project.
WP5 delivered the first version of the AI-based tools for detecting drugs clues and evidence within multimodal data (like texts, audio, image and video files) and to analyse crypto-currency transactions for discovering hidden networks of crypto actors. Furthermore, WP5 set the state for the creation of SELP datasets, designed to support the training of AI and ML algorithms.principles to the project activities and tools have been identified.
The initial version of the graph-based ARIEN Knowledge Base was implemented in the context of WP6 according to the data model defined in WP3. Dedicated applications for managing the chain of custody and the investigative reconstruction have been delivered for revealing insights and emerging trends, and for fostering cooperation among cross-border and cross-agency law enforcement.
Pilot scenarios have been defined and three demonstration rounds expected in the project have been planned (WP7). Dissemination and communication activities started at the beginning of the project with the participation to workshops and public events. The exploitation plan of the tools was initiated with the goal to innovate the technology currently used by LEAs and BGAs to fight the cross-country drugs trafficking phenomenon (WP8).
