One of the biggest threats facing society today - organised and armed criminal or terrorist gangs - could soon be challenged with the help of a new system being co-ordinated by Sheffield Hallam University.

Organised crime and terrorism creates a threat that can undermine the democratic and economic basis of societies, resulting in a loss of confidence in the law. And despite Home Office statistics suggesting a fall in gun-related crime in recent years, other sources suggest that gun crimes have doubled since the late 90s, with deeply disturbing figures of a gun crime being committed every 52 minutes being reported by the media.

Working with police forces, government organisations, IT companies and research centres from across Europe, Sheffield Hallam is leading the way in the development of a system which could drastically increase the efficiency with which police can react to gun-related crimes, leading to a significant improvement in security throughout the EU.

The Odyssey project - funded to the tune of £1.8 million by the European Commission - provides a platform through which anti-crime units from across the continent can instantly access and share crime data and evidence for cross comparison. This will allow police forces to co-operate on cases and pinpoint similar crimes which could be related.

Professor Babak Akhgar, an expert in informatics and information systems at Sheffield Hallam's Cultural, Communication and Computing Research Institute (C3RI), is co-ordinating the Odyssey project.

'Security agencies have been using ballistics data for many years but, until now, cross-referencing that data has been a long process. This system automatically alerts relevant agents in other countries when there is a match on gun and bullet signatures,' he said.

'Criminals use guns as currency, and Odyssey allows agencies to build profiles of crime networks by tracking the unique 'signature' that guns and bullets produce when they are fired.'

The system automatically flags up any matches in ballistic data regardless of its source, meaning a single gun used in multiple crimes can be tracked throughout Europe, allowing for the potential to apprehend not just a single suspect, but networks of criminals in numerous countries. Intelligence will be extracted using advanced semantic knowledge extraction and data-mining to facilitate fast, responsible decision making.

One of the driving forces behind Odyssey has been EUROPOL, the European law enforcement organisation, which hopes the project will help to develop new European Union standards in policing and combating organised crime and terrorism.

Other partners involved in the development include the National Ballistics Intelligence Service (West Midlands Police is the lead police force), the Royal Military Academy, the SAS Institute, the Politecnico di Milano, An Garda Siochana (Irish police), the Italian police force, Xlab, Forensic Pathways Ltd, and Atos Origin.