Open data analysis for environmental scanning in security-oriented strategic analysis

Public institutions are increasing their efforts to offer significant amounts of data as open data. Semantic Web technologies provide a framework for publishing and consuming open data, which can be exploited by data mining techniques to unravel new insights of developing phenomena. In particular, strategic analysts can use available linked open data (LOD) technologies and resources, aimed at the combination of heterogeneous data sources, to study macro-economic and social trends, in order to identify and monitor early indicators of security threats. In this paper, we describe a general framework for the utilization of LOD in this context, focusing on the analysis of organized crime, and an illustrative example of its application.