A collaborative approach for incorporating forensic case data into crime investigation using criminal intelligence...

Area of Science:

• Forensic Science
• Criminal Investigation
• Intelligence Analysis

Background:

• Effective collaboration between forensic science and criminal investigation is vital for crime resolution.
• Current models and methods for this partnership are underdeveloped or absent.
• Bridging this gap requires integrating crime intelligence methodologies.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a framework for enhancing collaboration between forensic science and criminal investigation.
• To explore the application of crime intelligence methods, specifically visualization, in forensic contexts.
• To address the challenges in designing effective visualizations for forensic case analysis.

Main Methods:

• Adoption of the general intelligence process from crime intelligence.
• Analysis of investigative problems through perspectives: entities, relationships, time, space, and quantitative aspects.
• Utilizing visualization methods, particularly link-charts, to represent and analyze case data.

Main Results:

• Visualization, especially link-charts, can structure and simplify the analysis of complex forensic cases by illustrating entity connections.
• Integrating forensic data into visualizations supports decision-making in a collaborative framework.
• Developing informative visualizations that avoid biasing the reasoning process presents a significant challenge.

Conclusions:

• Crime intelligence methods offer a valuable approach to improve forensic science and criminal investigation collaboration.
• Visualization techniques are powerful tools for integrating and analyzing forensic data, aiding collaborative efforts.
• Further research is needed to refine visualization specifications for unbiased and effective forensic case analysis.