Odyssey is a European Commission grant funded research project which tackles the problem of analysing crime and ballistics data taken from disparate heterogeneous ballistic systems across Europe Union Member States. The partnership consortium involves twelve members including police representatives from Servizio Polizia Scientifica (Italy), West Midlands Police (UK) representing the National Ballistic Programme, Garda Siochana (Eire), North Yorkshire Police (UK) and Europol. The Law Enforcement Agencies recognised the investigative challenge brought about by the variety of data systems in operation across Europe established by individual Member States having autonomy to choose their own ballistics data system. The Odyssey consortium acknowledged that there was no interoperable process to analyze ballistics data taken from these separate systems used in each Member State to tackle organised crime and terrorism. At present it is not possible to collectively analyze ballistics data extracted from the heterogeneous systems currently in use. Odyssey sought to provide a platform in an attempt to resolve these challenges by the development of interoperable data and interoperable systems. In addition, the Odyssey project is also exploiting ontologies, semantic reasoning and data mining and has produced positive outcomes for crime and ballistics analysis across Member States. To learn more about the Odyssey project visit: http://research.shu.ac.uk/aces/odyssey/
