The general idea of the AMBER/Child Alert System is that by broadcasting and distributing information about a missing child to the community, the public's involvement can trigger critical feedback that would have otherwise been ignored. This feedback, in several cases, can be proved decisive in finding the missing child. Despite the efforts at country and European level to effectively address the issue of missing children, a number of key challenges remain open, including lack of location-focused distribution of alerts, insufficient capture and diffusion of information, and lack of a mechanism that uses and merges all available sources of information. The aim of this paper is to present a novel approach for handling such challenges through a data analytics platform and a mobile application available to all citizens. Using the active research fields of human mobility pattern analysis and machine learning, we show that missing children investigations, as well as search and rescue operations, can be actively supported and enhanced when multiple data sources are combined and analyzed.

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The phenomenon of missing children is complex, further complicated by the specific circumstances of missing unaccompanied migrant minors. Owing to the (often forced) migration, these children have moved through different countries with diverse legislation and work practices. The international nature of these cases leads to confusion about the responsibility of different actors. Additionally, for these cases, little data are available. This article critically assesses current work practices in the EU. It also introduces a new practical solution based on empirical data from 26 international expert interviews, proposing a new alert system for missing children cases to improve the efficiency in responding to them and the international communication between stakeholders to improve the situation of missing unaccompanied migrant minors. The solution is currently in use by three organisations and has already been used in more than 85 real-life cases. It is concluded that it holds the potential to connect actors in a new, efficient way and prevent children, and unaccompanied migrant minors particularly, from falling off the grid. It is also highlighted that the situation of unaccompanied migrant minors is highly disadvantaged, and new, homogenous legislation among the EU member states that does not discriminate against the rights of migrant minors is imperative. New research should also actively involve them to better grasp their situation before and during their disappearance.