Horizon Scanning workshops, the Netherlands

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22 November 2018

Representatives from EU Member State environmental regulators and enforcement bodies from throughout Europe have attended workshops in the Netherlands to take part in a European pilot for the LIFE SMART Waste project's Horizon Scanning Toolkit¹.

The project's recently-developed Horizon Scanning Toolkit is designed to help environmental regulators to build an early warning system for emerging developments in the waste sector, with the aim of protecting the industry from future criminal enterprise. The Toolkit is a practical guide that regulatory bodies and their partners can use to:

build intelligence about waste crime by gathering, organising and sharing weak signals of change;
create insight into changing criminal behaviours and patterns of crime through assessing, ranking and deepening their understanding of the implications of those weak signals;
work together to research, plan and deliver action to protect consumers and the industry now and in the future.

Two workshops - in the Hague (11-12 September 2018) and Arnhem (20-21 November 2018) - were held, initially to familiarise participants with the Toolkit, and subsequently to jointly review and analyse the results of scans undertaken by the group. The preliminary scanning activity resulted in the identification of a number of unknown trends, illustrating the benefits of the approach. The workshops provided useful insights about the needs of practitioners using the tools, information on open source research and discussions on best practice.

It is anticipated that the group will reconvene in early 2019 to perform further scans to identify emerging trends in the waste sector and their potential for criminal enterprise.

Notes

Links to the Horizon Scanning Toolkit and related research:

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