With the EU ODS and HFC phase-down set out in the F-gas Regulation, a steady increase of smuggling is observed in EU with the low risks and high profits making the illegal trade especially attractive to criminal networks. The PERIVALLON multimodal analytics will process the textual content to identify key named entities and concepts that are potentially relevant to the illicit sale of ODS and HFCs. At the same time, visual content will be analysed for the automatic detection of objects of interest. Trend analysis as well as predictive analytics will allow for a better understanding of how the illegal trade of ODS and HFCs is evolving over time. The acquired data, including X-ray scanners on-site, will be analysed for detecting and recognising potential risks. All the collected data will be automatically correlated and if a threat is detected, an alarm will be raised in the Monitoring Centre of the PERIVALLON platform.
The PUC4 pilot demonstration took place on June 18th 2025, in Costanza (Romania), and was primarily led by RBP and IGP, with support from the partners: CENTRIC, CERTH, DRAXIS, DYLOG, ETRA, KEMEA, KPLER, and SMOB.
The pilot demonstration consisted of two different phases:
- the first one, which is based on the analysis of online marketplaces to identify the illegal trade of ozone-depleting substances and HFCs,
- the second one, consisted of an operational approach to identifying and inspecting the potentially illegal cargo in the port of Constanta.
Thus, the main objective of the pilot demonstration of PUC4 was to remotely detect illegal trade of Ozone-Depleting Substances (ODS) and HydroFluoroCarbons (HFCs), through multimodal analytics, multimedia and multilingual extraction and automatic detection functionalities within PERIVALLON platform. In particular, data from online marketplaces, AIS and satellite data, and textual data were used for the implementation of the pilot.
The active involvement of RBP and IGP, supported by the technical partners, ensured the successful implementation of the demonstration. Importantly, external stakeholders such as the Romanian Environmental National Guard also participated, further strengthening the operational relevance of the pilot. In total, 31 colleagues from the PERIVALLON Consortium and an external end user attended the meeting (24 in presence and 7 remotely).
The excellent evaluation results show that the PERIVALLON platform is perceived as a highly useful, relevant, and high-quality tool for combatting environmental crimes – specifically in the context of PUC4. Its ability to combine advanced text analysis, multilingual processing, object and multimedia content classification, monitoring of online sources and marketplaces, and risk assessment into a coherent workflow, has been positively evaluated.
