U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government, Department of Justice.

NCJRS Virtual Library

The Virtual Library houses over 235,000 criminal justice resources, including all known OJP works.
Click here to search the NCJRS Virtual Library

Developing a Spatial‐Temporal Method for the Geographic Investigation of Shoeprint Evidence

NCJ Number
305881
Journal
Journal of Forensic Science Volume: 54 Issue: 1 Dated: 2008 Pages: 152-158
Author(s)
Ge Lin ; Gregory Elmes ; Mike Walnoha ; Xiannian Chen
Date Published
2008
Length
7 pages
Annotation

This article examines the potential of a spatial-temporal method for analysis of forensic shoeprint data.

Abstract

The large volume of shoeprint evidence recovered at crime scenes results in varied success in matching a print to a known shoe type and subsequently linking sets of matched prints to suspected offenders. Unlike DNA and fingerprint data, a major challenge is to reduce the uncertainty in linking sets of matched shoeprints to a suspected serial offender. Shoeprint data for 2004 were imported from the Greater London Metropolitan Area Bigfoot database into a geographic information system, and a spatial-temporal algorithm developed for this project. The results show that by using distance and time constraints interactively, the number of candidate shoeprints that can implicate one or few suspects can be substantially reduced. It concludes that the use of space-time and other ancillary information within a geographic information system can be quite helpful for forensic investigation. (Published abstract provided)