ARIEN proposes the execution of a comprehensive workplan that thoroughly addresses the call topic aligned to the 2021-2025 EU Drugs Action Plan achieved through a holistic innovation action that builds a real-time intelligence picture for illegal drug production and trafficking incidence across the EU. This action is bolstered by AI-driven tools to understand, detect, analyse and track the entire drugs trafficking chain, its financial flows and the role of black-markets in the global darknet and their relationships with social media. ARIEN builds on a strong platform of multi-disciplinary research, following a co-creation approach, across the criminological, societal, and legislative landscapes. The designed platform will make recommendations for harmonization and drive an agenda for the development of modular solutions embedding modern Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques and best practices for international cooperation in data-rich environments in a legally and ethically compliant manner. Aiming at improving the investigative capability of LEAs on illegal drugs production and trafficking, ARIEN will leverage on innovative AI techniques to monitor online illicit drugs markets and collect precious information on physical drug-dealing hotspots through social media. Additional layers of analysis, supported by explainable AI methods, will provide actionable knowledge on modus operandi and emerging threats and trends on drugs and drug-related organized crime networks through integrations with criminal records data and detection of online activities. Moreover, ARIEN will promote effective strategies on international cooperation among EU and non-EU LEAs, Customs and Border Guards Authorities, and policy makers to enhance investigative activities against criminal groups, capitalising on effective AI techniques.

MKLab has a critical role in ARIEN project by leading two tasks. The first task involves the development of AI-based mechanisms for the analysis of cryptocurrency transactions aiming to identify potential illicit activities linked to drugs trafficking. The second task focuses on the development of AI-based analytics services for detecting trends in drugs trafficking, illicit production and consumption. This includes leveraging geospatial and temporal information on the sale and usage of specific drugs and precursors. Moreover, MKLab’s involvement extends to other technical tasks, such as extracting data from the Surface Web and social media to identify illicit drug precursors and discover relevant drug marketplaces in Darknets. Finally, MKLab contributes to tasks related to designing ARIEN’s architecture, deploying and validating the developed systems to enhance LEAs’ capabilities in combatting illegal drugs production and trafficking.