Combat Online Illegal Numismatic Sales

The COINS project aimed at providing a substantial contribution to fight the theft and illicit trade of ancient coins, which is a major part of the illegal antiques market. In order to achieve this, COINS developed an integration of the CIDOC-CRM, the standard ontology for cultural heritage, and a multilingual thesaurus. A dedicated data management tools and a customized, web based search engine were also created.

To achieve this goal, state-of-the-art Information Technology was used for automatic image-based coin recognition: stolen coins offered for sale at auctions or on the internet can be automatically detected by comparing the published picture with the stored image of the stolen item.

COINS also benefited of the collaboration with majors national museums and the Italian law enforcement agency Arma dei Carabinieri.


Framework

FP6-Policies-3.6
The protection of cultural heritage and associated conservation strategies

AreAS
  • Cultural Heritage protection
  • Prevention of cultural heritage related crimes
  • CIDOC-CRM
Period

2007 – 2009 (24 months).

Link CORDIS