Title: A platform for discovering and sharing confidential ballistic crime data

Authors: Simeon J. Yates; Babak Akhgar; Christopher Bates; Lucasz Jopek; Richard Wilson

Addresses: Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK ' Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK ' Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK ' Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK ' Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute, Sheffield Hallam University, Sheffield, S1 1WB, UK

Abstract: Criminal investigations generate large volumes of complex data that detectives have to analyse and understand. This data tend to be ‘siloed’ within individual jurisdictions and re-using it in other investigations can be difficult. Investigations into trans-national crimes are hampered by the problem of discovering relevant data held by agencies in other countries and of sharing those data. Gun-crimes are one major type of incident that showcases this: guns are easily moved across borders and used in multiple crimes but finding that a weapon was used elsewhere in Europe is difficult. In this paper we report on the Odyssey Project, an EU-funded initiative to mine, manipulate and share data about weapons and crimes. The project demonstrates the automatic combining of data from disparate repositories for cross-correlation and automated analysis. The data arrive from different cultural/domains with multiple reference models using real-time data feeds and historical databases.

Keywords: data sharing; ballistics; crime data; trans-national crimes; gun crimes; Odyssey; knowledge management; domain-specific language; Odyssey semantic language; security; criminal investigations; weapons information; EU; European Union.

DOI: 10.1504/IJKWI.2011.044124

International Journal of Knowledge and Web Intelligence, 2011 Vol.2 No.2/3, pp.202 - 218

Published online: 07 Mar 2015 *

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