What ‘lab in a box’ or other similar technologies are available to the police for forensic crime scene investigations?
Background
"Identification and tracing is the ability to trace, attribute, and confirm the identity of a person, location or activity to evidential levels, such as tracing missing persons.
The ability to manage the variety and quantity of digital forensic material recovered during investigations, in a manner that maintains privacy and minimises the intrusion for victims, is an urgent priority for policing. Our interests span multiple disciplines since we seek not only best-in-class digital tooling for the analysis of text, media, and metadata, but also improvements in process, workflow, and our ability to ensure digital forensic awareness across the workforce. This includes ‘democratising’ the ability to run safe, rapid, and effective forensics at scene, be it through ‘lab in a box’ technologies or by other means. We are particularly interested in advances that can support crypto-currency investigations."
Next steps
"We welcome your engagement with our ARIs in the following ways:
• If you have evidence that completely or partly supports or answers one of our ARIs, we invite you to share that with us. For any ongoing research relevant to policing and crime reduction, we encourage you to register your research on the College of Policing’s research projects map, which has been designed to promote collaboration and support requests for participants.
• If you are, or plan to be, carrying out research that relates to one of our ARIs, we’d like to hear about it. While we cannot respond to speculative approaches for research funding, we will where possible act to support your ambitions, including finding you policing partners where possible.
• If you are submitting a funding or grant application that aligns with one of our ARIs, we hope that referencing policing’s ARIs will help to strengthen your case for the possible public impact of the research.
• We will use the ARI document to structure our academic engagement, prioritise events and build new connections with external partners. We will be using our ARIs in our engagement with UKRI, and we will publish any opportunities for funding via our website https://science.police.uk/
Please send any correspondence and questions to csa@npcc.police.uk, including ‘ARI’ in the subject heading."
Source
This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:
Related UKRI funded projects
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Towards a Smart Digital Forensic Advisor to Support First Responders with At-Scene Triage of Digital Evidence Across Crime Types
Over 90% of reported crime involves a digital device, and the increased use of digital devices in criminality has resulted in significant backlogs within the departments that forensically examine these devices. Despite t...
Funded by: ESRC
Why might this be relevant?
Partially relevant as it focuses on digital evidence triage at-scene, not specifically 'lab in a box' technologies.
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D-Figo and D-safe - Digital Evidence Management Solution
Computer Science Labs Ltd (CSL) is a spin-off from Data Clinic Ltd (DC), a specialist computer support service company delivering data recovery products, technology, solutions and services to its clients. The B2B brand C...
Funded by: Innovate UK
Why might this be relevant?
The project focuses on developing digital evidence management solutions for forensic investigations, including 'lab in a box' technologies.
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Loughborough University and Foster & Freeman Limited
To develop a probe capable of identifying forensically pertinent samples at crime scenes and indicating their approx age (the in-situ probe). Once commercialised, the device will not only enhance investigators’ capabilit...
Funded by: Innovate UK
Why might this be relevant?
The project aims to develop a probe for identifying forensically pertinent samples at crime scenes, which partially aligns with the question on technologies for forensic crime scene investigations.