The Project

The project aims at utilizing publicly and privately available data, link them in a unified data warehouse and develop sophisticated analytic capabilities on top of it. Leveraging data on crime, socio-economic development, consumer sentiment, legitimate trade, consumer behavior, illicit cigarette and tobacco market and intercepted illegal imports the project will create a unified database that can be used to visualize and analyze key trends in illicit trade and outline the main drivers at a regional level. This will be used to gain insight into the connection between illicit trade in cigarettes and other criminal activities at a detailed level of granularity. Higher-level strategic data (OLAF statistics) will also be visualized at the EU-level, showing macro-drivers of illicit trade in the EU. Furthermore, a sophisticated forecasting and risk management system is to be built on top of that, dynamically showing increases in the risk of illicit cigarette trade in different regions that can guide both producers and law enforcement authorities.

Objectives

The project success will be ensured by meeting the following objectives:

  • Collect national level and EU-level data on crime, socio-economic development, consumer sentiment, legitimate trade, consumer behavior, illicit cigarette and tobacco market and intercepted illegal imports and link it.
  • Ensure data utilization by developing a data warehouse and populating it with the collected data.
  • Support decision-making and communication by creating visualization tools and self-service Business Intelligence (BI) capabilities.
  • Elicit process drivers through statistical modeling showing which variables most strongly affect illicit cigarette and tobacco trade.
  • Support strategic and operational decision-making by developing a forecasting model at a national level in the EU.
  • Provide guidance through a risk management model at the regional level in Bulgaria, showing the increase in risk of illegal trade.
  • Disseminate results and inform the stakeholders by holding a conference on data visualization, model utility, and data-driven strategy.

Impact

On the strategic level, it will create a unified data warehouse of all relevant data for cigarette and tobacco consumption, which can serve as a one-stop-shop for all analytic needs of all groups of stakeholders. This single source of truth provides both an easy access to data, as well as promotes common understanding and medium for communication of pertinent facts and trends to facilitate discussion and decision-making. The analytic layer on top of that can serve strategic decisions and focus PMI and law enforcement’s efforts towards eliminating the root causes of illegal cigarette trade. The forecasting model will allow the user to run different scenarios and outline quantitative effects, thus helping both business intelligence and planning, as well as lobbying efforts. On the operational side, the risk management model provides clear guidelines to focus control and enforcement activities to decrease in illegal cigarette trade.