Project report
Policy brief
Other outputs (selection)
Publications
Lavorgna A (2022) Il traffico di specie protette. Prospettive critiche e interdisciplinari. FrancoAngeli
Lavorgna A (2022) Illegal plant trafficking poses niche challenge to law enforcement. Jane’s Intelligence Review
Whitehead D, Cowell CR, Lavorgna A and Middleton SE (2021) Countering plant crime online: cross-disciplinary collaboration in the FloraGuard study. Forensic Science International: Animals and Environments
Lavorgna A and Rekha GS (2020) From horticulture to psychonautics: an analysis of online communities discussing and trading plants with psychotropic properties. Trends in Organized Crimes
Lavorgna A and Sajeva M (2020) Studying Illegal Online Trades in Plants: Market Characteristics, Organisational and Behavioural Aspects, and Policing Challenges. European Journal on Criminal Policy and Research
Lavorgna A, Middleton SE, Pickering B and Neumann G (2020) FloraGuard: tackling the online illegal trade in endangered plants through a cross-disciplinary ICT-enabled methodology. Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice
Middleton SE, Lavorgna A, Neumann G and Whitehead D (2020) Information Extraction from the Long Tail: A Socio-Technical AI Approach for Criminology Investigations into the Online Illegal Plant Trade. In 12th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci ’20 Companion), July 6–10, 2020, Southampton, United Kingdom. ACM
Middleton SE, Lavorgna A and McAlister R (2020) STAIDCC20: 1st International Workshop on Socio-technical AI Systems for Defence, Cybercrime and Cybersecurity. In 12th ACM Conference on Web Science (WebSci ’20 Companion), July 6–10, 2020, Southampton, United Kingdom. ACM
Margulies J, Bullough LA, Hinsley A, Ingram D, Cowell C, Goettsch B, Klitgard B, Lavorgna A, Sinovas P and Phelps J (2019) Illegal wildlife trade and the persistence of “plant blindness”. Plants People Planet
Lavorgna A, Rutherford C, Vaglica V, Smith MJ e Sajeva M (2018) CITES, wild plant, and opportunities for crime. European Journal of Criminal Policy and Research
Software
FloraGuard intelligence visualization software (github), https://github.com/stuartemiddleton/intel_viz_entity_graph
Presentations, Workshops and Posters
WebSci’20 Workshop: Socio-technical AI systems for defence, cybercrime and cybersecurity (STAIDCC20), proceedings
Kew KaBAM talk, August 2020 – Internal (online) talk to the Kew Science Directorate to provide an overview of the study to an audience of around 120 botanical scientists
Conference presentation – Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Conference, San Antonio, March 2020, “FloraGuard: tackling the online illegal trade in endangered plants through a cross-disciplinary ICT-enabled methodology”
Conference presentation – American Society of Criminology Conference, San Francisco, November 2019, “FloraGuard: tackling the online illegal trade in endangered plants through cross-disciplinary approaches”
Conference presentation – European Society of Criminology Conference, Gent, September 2019, “FloraGuard: understanding and supporting law enforcement needs and challenges to tackle the online illegal trade in endangered plants”
Poster – SIGIR-2019, Paris, July 2019, “Location Extraction from Social Media: Geoparsing, Location Disambiguation and Geotagging” SIGIR-2019-poster-printers-draft
Workshop – DSTL, London, May 2019, “Next Autonomy Challenge: Decision Support for Military Commanders”
Invited Seminar – Cardiff University, Cardiff, February 2019 , ” Information Extraction and Analytics from Social Media and Online Marketplaces: UK Illegal Plant Trade, Military Intelligence Analysis, Breaking News” Cardiff-2019-middleton-v1
Poster – NCSC Safety vs Security Workshop, Southampton, January 2019, “FloraGuard: Tacking the illegal online trade in endangered plants” NCSC-2019-FloraGuard-poster-v
Workshop – London, October 2018,, “Raising the profile of plants in ITW policy: an evidence-based agenda setting workshop”. Evidence to Action. Research to Address Illegal Wildlife Trade. Zoological Society of London
Panellist, London, October 2018, “Online wildlife trafficking: a criminological perspective”. Evidence to Action. Research to Address Illegal Wildlife Trade. Zoological Society of London
Invited Seminar – UCL, London, October 2018, “Geospatial research into social media and online marketplaces: Disaster management, Breaking news and UK illegal plant trade” UCL-2018-middleton-v3
Invited Talk – SciCar-2018, Dortmund, September 2018, “AI supporting content verification and analysis: Session: Automated Fact-Checking: The way to go?” SciCar-2018-middleton-v3
Invited Talk – 10th European Regional CITES Meeting on Plants, Palermo, September 2018, “Wildlife trafficking goes cyber: myths, trends and challenges”
Outreach
Kew “Read and Watch” Online Article, providing an easy-to-read overview of the study for the general public, October 2020
Middleton SE, Lavorgna A and McAlister R (2020) Post-workshop report on Socio-technical AI Systems for Defence, Cybercrime and Cybersecurity (STAIDCC20). Web Science Institute, July
Festival of Social Science event “Opportunities and challenges in curbing wildlife trafficking”, University of Southampton, November 2019 https://esrcfestivalofsocialsciencesouthampton.org/
Ministerial AI Roundtable – Cabinet Office, London, Ministerial AI Roundtable: use of AI in policing chaired by Policing Minister Nick Hurd, July 2019
Media reporting
“Il traffico di specie protette. Prospettive critiche e interdisciplinari”, Letture.org, 2022
“Kwekers in de strijd tegen plantensmokkel” NPO Radio 1 , August 2021
“How to buy an endangered plant online”, Plant Crimes (a podcast by Ellen Airhart), February 2021
“Border Force and Kew Gardens launch AI effort to halt smuggling of rare houseplants”. The Telegraph, December 2020
“New tool will detect illegal trades in wildlife, say researcher”, WiredGov , October 2019