Hi All,

Rachel has asked that I tell you a bit about who we are and what we do and how we think we can help this group. 

We are one of the 16 winners in the Wildlife Crime Tech Challenge,a nd are looking forward to cooperating and coordianting with those involved in the fight against wildligfe crime.  We do this under our broad project title of KANAL - 'Keeping Animals Alive'.

By way of background, the three Mars Omega Partners are all senior ex-British Army officers, with backgrounds in intelligence, planning and strategy.   We have used that expertise to build a unique software application called JIGZAW.

JIGZAW blends the intelligence cycle (a formal process designed to ensure that information is processed into useable intelligence) with Game Theory, to allow us to give insights to decision makers into complex, multi-level, multi-player issues, that have been otherwise difficult to analyse.

If you think of the complexity of wildlife crime and all its various moving parts, then being able to deconstruct a problem is vital as is the creation of a solution to the particular problem.

JIGZAW was designed by our analysts and the three Partners to help conservancies, and other protected areas, process information and make appropriate decisions based on the best available intelligence.

It is a web-based software application designed to store, process, and share information about any and all aspects of the illegal wildlife trade including, amongst other things: actors (low and high-level), methods, illegal supply chains and trafficking routes.

It has been specifically designed so that it can take all kinds of data feeds, so we can integrate all manner of APIs easily and quickly.  A very rich synthesized information store can therefore be created.

It has already been successfully implemented in Kenya to capture information about elephant and rhino poaching and to make a real difference in the management of a complex and difficult transnational situation.

We designed JIGZAW in its current format as many developing countries, conservancies and protected areas lack the capacity to safely store and process data and share information securely among relevant networks and conservancies.

So, an easy to use web-based database system offers a solution in low-capacity environments, and that is what we are looking to roll out across the African wildlife conservation and protection domains to help defeat crime - if we can find a scale partner to help us do so.

Hope that helps!

Anthony