"Terrorist acts committed using Home Made Explosives (HME) pose an increasing threat against our citizens. The usage of HME in the 2005 attacks in the London Underground is a frightening example. Our capability to deal with this threat is challenged by the terrorists’ capability to easily manufacture explosives from common components. LOTUS will address the critical issue of detecting bomb (and drugs) factories. The concept and objectives of the LOTUS project are to create a system by which illicit production of explosives and drugs can be detected during the preparation and production phase of a terrorist plot. LOTUS provides intelligence of a sort that is otherwise not available. This intelligence covers a gap where little information is available from other sources. Detection in this phase has advantages compared to detection of the explosives themselves during e.g. the transportation phase. The LOTUS project main activities are measurement of the dispersion of pre-cursors at production and surveillance system development. The system capability will be demonstrated by adapting existing and emerging sensors for detection of selected precursors, and integrating the sensors in a networked system. By using existing global infrastructures for positioning (GPS) and networking (GSM) the LOTUS system can be used more or less anywhere in the world with small costs for supporting installations and personnel. The final outcome of the LOTUS project is a field test and demonstration. The demonstration system will be based on mobile sensors (3-5) mounted in law enforcement vehicles. Findings from the sensors (type and amount of substance, position and time) are automatically sent to an operations centre display unit where data is collected and evaluated for further action. The LOTUS consortium consists of three research institutes (FOI, TNO, AIT), two industries (SAAB, Bruker), three SMEs (Portendo, Ramem,Bruhn NewTech), the University of Barcelona, and a group of End Users."