Versatile InfoRmation Toolkit for end-Users oriented Open-Sources explOitations

Sponsored by the European Commission as part of EC Security Research Call 2 of 7th Framework Programme, specifically for activity 10.3 "Intelligent surveillance and enhancing border security", Virtuoso aims to provide the security authorities with an advanced integrated toolkit, developed around an "open" architecture to exploit open source information for decision support . Providing at each step actionable, rated, validated information.Integrated in an open framework in order to accept existing or future tools. Compliant with legal and ethical issues.

The VIRTUOSO toolkit will be the association of several components that can be grouped into two classes: infrastructural components and functional components. The functional components constitute the core of the VIRTUOSO toolkit and include all the data processing components that will involve in finding, selecting, and acquiring information from public sources and analyzing it to provide relevant information useful to the decision-maker. The infrastructural components will be developed to ensure the interactivity and the collaboration between the functional components to accomplish a given user need.

The main functional components of the VIRTUOSO system are: Information Gathering components (Acquisition), Information Extraction and Structuring components (Processing), Knowledge Acquisition components (knowledge management), Decision support and visualization components.

Therefore, the VIRTUOSO project is composed of 11 Work Packages, a management Work Package (WP0), a user requirement Work Package (WP1), an evaluation Work Package (WP9), a Work Package dedicated to dissemination activities (WP10) and seven technical Work Packages. WP2 and WP8 will be dedicated to development of the infrastructural components and will contribute mainly to the development of the framework. The other WPs will be dedicated to the development of the functional components.