The RED-Alert development efforts are led by four technology SMEs (USATGES BCN 21 SL-INSKT, INTU-VIEW LTD-INT, MAVEN SEVEN SOLUTIONS-MAV, INFORMATION CATALYST FOR ENTERPRISE LTD-ICE) and 1 large industrials (SIVECO Romania-SIV) who will own and exploit the main exploitable results.
The development efforts are driven by end-user (LEA) requirements in order to make sure that they are aligned with real-world requirements. End-users selected for the project cover a variety of countries where the terrorism pressure is medium (Spain, Romania, Moldavia) to very high (UK, Israel) so the system can be field-tested in the most demanding contexts.
The project will therefore have a direct impact on the growth of the industrial suppliers of the consortium:
• INSKT, INT, MAV, ICE will leverage the project to develop their sales of customized social medial analytic products towards European LEAs and even more at international level;
• INSKT and INT will also be able to reuse the project know-how to enhance their existing NLP technology platforms (Sento and Intuscan) in various application domains (non LEA related) such as consumer sentiment analysis.
• SIV will use the know how gained to open new markets and to identify new opportunities for the current clients and for potential clients.
The technical work of the project requires an interdisciplinary approach of the project (social network analysis, natural language processing, semantic media analysis, complex event processing, data privacy, psychology, counter-terrorism) that can only be provided by a combination of researchers, industry suppliers and end-users.
The RED-Alert project consortium was developed in order to balance the contribution of:
• Academic researchers;
• Industry-driven innovation partners;
• End-users driven innovation.
New knowledge on NLP, SNA or CEP created by the RED-Alert research is the source of improvement for industry suppliers and in return, new market prospects for innovation identified by LEAs can point towards new avenues for intelligent law enforcement solutions.
Societal impact: giving better tools to European LEAs while strengthening personal data privacy. The project results will help LEAs in Europe (and around the world) to embrace digital technology and use social media to support their day-to-day activities.
As dependence on social media for personal and business information gathering and dissemination grows, social media use by law enforcement agencies will accelerate rapidly, prompting the need for social media training, policies, dedicated staff, and investment in social media analytics software, all of which can be supported by the RED-Alert project results. The project results will also help LEAs using social media must keep on top of legal and regulatory compliance issues, such as public records, data security, and terms of use with social media providers, jurisdictional considerations, and social media as it related to existing laws, such as those around harassment. Any project which involves the processing of personal data needs to strike a balance between the interests of society and the fundamental privacy rights of internet users, and this project will comply with generic data privacy legislation as well as specific substantive provisions relating to the processing of personal data within a law enforcement context.
The expected impact:
Impact 1:
• Improved investigation capabilities;
• Crimes solved more rapidly, to reduce societal distress, investigative costs and the impact on victims and their relatives;
• Prevention of more terrorist endeavors;
• Better identification and understanding of criminal activities.
Impact 2:
• LEA officers provided with better tools to help them on their (specialized) daily work.
Other impacts expected related to these project objectives are the following:
• Effective prevention of terrorist activities organized via the Internet;
• Increased competitiveness of suppliers.
