UBITECH hosts the official kick-off meeting for the AVALANCHE project on October 8th and 9th, 2024, in Athens, Greece. This highly-anticipated project, funded by the European Commission under Grant Agreement No. 101168393, officially began on October 1st, 2024, and will span through September 2026. AVALANCHE, an EU-funded Innovation Action, aims to make groundbreaking advancements in the fight against crime and terrorism by fostering international cooperation. The project is poised to develop a state-of-the-art, holistic, and versatile solution to enhance the capabilities of Law Enforcement Agencies (LEAs) across Europe. The platform will address a broad spectrum of transnational illegal activities, including human trafficking, firearms and drug smuggling, child exploitation, terrorism, and cybercrime, all of which are increasingly coordinated through the digital landscape.
The AVALANCHE platform is designed to empower LEAs with advanced tools for the semi-automated collection of evidence and analysis of cross-border illicit activities. By leveraging intelligence-led methods and context-aware actions, the platform will significantly enhance the operational capacity of LEAs to track, investigate, and prevent complex criminal networks. Additionally, AVALANCHE will enable interoperability and communication between national and international databases, fostering seamless data exchange and bolstering international cooperation through common standards and schemas alignment.
UBITECH serves as the project coordinator for AVALANCHE and is responsible for overseeing the overall project management and consortium coordination. UBITECH will also spearhead the design and development of the AVALANCHE software and hardware architecture, focusing on system integration and communication. The architecture will be built using an Ethical-by-Design, Human-centred, and Co-development approach to ensure transparency, ethical alignment, and usability for practitioners.
One of UBITECH’s key contributions will be the development of a highly configurable, multi-threaded web crawling and intelligence system capable of analyzing activities related to illegal goods trafficking, human exploitation, and cybercrime. This system will collect and harmonize data from a wide range of sources, including the surface web, dark web, darknet marketplaces, and social media platforms, to assist LEAs in identifying and dismantling criminal networks.
Additionally, UBITECH will develop advanced data analysis pipelines designed to uncover complex patterns and correlations between physical entities such as suspect identities, IP addresses, and encoded names. The use of cutting-edge techniques like causal modelling algorithms and unsupervised learning will enable the reconstruction and monitoring of criminal networks, focusing on their entire operational chain—from trafficking to commercial transactions.
The key objectives of AVALANCHE include: to develop a versatile platform for detecting, tracking, and preventing cross-border crime; to empower LEAs with semi-automated tools for evidence collection and explainable investigations; to ensure interoperability between national and international databases for seamless information exchange; to train LEAs on the effective use of new technologies through tailored curricula; and to collaborate with Europol’s Innovation Lab and the EU Policy Instrument (EMPACT) for continuous feedback and benchmarking. Last but not least, the platform will also contribute to LEAs’ operational standards, creating a lasting impact on the law enforcement ecosystem across Europe.
