The Odyssey platform: a unified European response to a global threat.

Odyssey is a European funded research project that tackles the problem of analysing crime and ballistics data, taken from disparate heterogeneous ballistic systems, across Europe. The partnership consortium involves 12 members including police representatives from Servizio Polizia Scientifica (DAC) – Italy, West Midlands Police ( representing National Ballistic Programme) – UK, An Garda Siochana – Eire, North Yorkshire Police-UK and Europol. The variety of systems in operation across Europe has been brought about through each individual country having the autonomy to choose its own ballistics system. At present there is no interoperable way to analyse ballistics data taken from these systems used in each European country. At present it is not possible to collectively analyse ballistics data extracted from the heterogeneous systems currently in use. The Odyssey platform attempts to resolve these issues by the development of (a) interoperable data and (b) interoperable systems. In addition, the project is also exploiting ontologies semantic reasoning and data mining. This paper intends to provide a brief overview of the Odyssey approach. It begins by providing a overview of the technology and goes on to highlight the shortcomings of the current state of the art in ballistics technologies. The paper concludes with a potential use case scenario that illustrates some of the benefits of the Odyssey platform.