Organized crime is becoming more diverse in its activities and methods including "greater levels of collaboration between criminal groups, greater mobility in and around the EU, a diversification of illicit activity, and a growing dependence on a dynamic infrastructure, anchored in key locations and facilitated by widespread use of the Internet" (the Director of Europol, in his foreword to the OCTA 2011 report). An important means for law enforcement in combatting such crime is strategic early warning which is heavily depending on an efficient and effective environmental scanning.

For this, the e-POOLICE project will—in close collaboration with law enforcement partners, as well as criminological and legal experts—develop a prototype of an environmental scanning system implementing solutions applying the most promising technological advances and breakthroughs as provided by the RTD partners. The solutions will be tested an evaluated through running realistic use case scenarios that are developed by our user partners.