Scanning of Open Data for Detection of Emerging Organized Crime Threats: The ePOOLICE Project

In fighting organized crime, open data provide an important source for both detecting emerging threats, as well as forecasting future threats. This allows the police to plan their resources and capacity for countering the threats in due time to prevent it or at least to mitigate its effects. A vital part of a system supporting the police analysts for this purpose is an efficient and effective system for scanning the open data providing information about the relevant factors in the environment.
This chapter presents the ePOOLICE project, aimed at developing a solution, the “ePOOLICE system”, for such a scanning system. Through a prototype demonstrated with use cases, the project provided a proof of concept of an efficient and effective environmental scanning system as part of the early warning system for discovering emerging, as well as likely future, organized crime threats.
Main elements in the solution include a central information and knowledge repository; information and knowledge management, including uncertainty management and traceability support; application methodology involving the analyst user in the loop; information fusion; and a comprehensive analysis of legal and ethical issues in deploying such systems. One of the outcomes from the end-user evaluation of the prototype was the desire to integrate internal data to support not only strategic, but also operational analysis and investigation.