RITHMS project intends to boost the operational capacity of Police and Customs/Border Authorities in addressing the increasingly organised and poly-criminal nature of trafficking in cultural goods through research, technological innovation, outreach and training. Illicit trade in cultural heritage has progressed from a local phenomenon limited to the initiative of a few individuals to a highly remunerative source of income for criminal organisations and terrorist groups that have taken advantage of the opportunities offered by the web and social media to further expand an already flourishing market. Against this background, RITHMS proposes an interdisciplinary approach made necessary by the transnational character of this crime and its links to other criminal networks. The project will define a replicable strategy to counter the challenges in addressing the illicit trafficking of stolen/looted cultural goods and to investigate the mechanisms underpinning it, including its connection with organised crime. RITHMS will foster cross-cutting research bringing together all the domains relevant to expand the understanding of this type of crime (art market, criminology, law studies, forensic science, etc.). Inputs from these disciplines will inform the theoretical framework underlying an interoperable AI-based Platform able to identify criminal organised networks and to provide investigators with valuable intelligence on the activities and evolution of such networks. The Platform will be leveraging the methods of Social Network Analysis (SNA), a methodology that gives a way to better understand human behaviour through people's relations and interactions. Including four Police authorities, two Border Agencies, one Police School, SMEs, and researchers from SSH and ICT, RITHMS Consortium is well positioned to offer solutions to counteract more effectively organisations involved in illicit activities against cultural heritage.

NOTIONES is a Latin lemma meaning “notions, ideas, investigations, cognisance” and therefore refers to “being informed”. The Call requires (a) to build a network of practitioners from security and intelligence services of EU MS & AC that has the objective (b) to support the needs of the security and intelligence services of the MS & AC for future security research programming. To address these requirements, NOTIONES consortium includes: (a) 15 practitioners from military, civil, financial, judiciary, local, national and international polices, coming from 9 EU MS and 6 AC. These practitioners, together with the other consortium members, grant a complete coverage of the 4 EU main areas: West Europe (PT, ES, UK, FR, IT, DE, AT), North Europe (FI, DK, SE, EE, LV), Middle Europe (PO, SK, UK), Middle East (IL, TR, GE, BG, BA, MK) for a total of 21 countries; (b) experts in security research programming. The NOTIONES’ S&T Coordinator is one of the 50 members of ESRAB and of the 64 members of ESRIF, the two Committees charged by the EC to outline its funding policy related to security research programming. In addition to that, the NOTIONES’ consortium includes 5 partners of PYTHIA and SOLOMON (Z&P, EXPSYS, ICSA, BDI, LESO), the two projects outlining the EDA/EC future defence research programming. The monitoring of technologies and the definition of requirements and recommendations for their industrialization will provide a great advantage to practitioners in the fields of intelligence and security. Through an iterative cycle, the output recommendations will be synthesized into specifications that can be provided to industry and academy across Europe, providing tangible benefits to those organisations engaged in intelligence and security. The results of the NOTIONES project, which has a lifetime of five years, will be presented to the broad intelligence community in workshops and conferences and will contribute to the definition of further security and intelligence research