Upper-bounding the incidence rate of associations between camouflage uniforms and surveillance images

• Norman Adams ^[1] ; Victor Perlin ^[1] ; Mitchell Rohde ^[1] ; Robert Gaffney ^[2] ; Natalia Harmsen ^[2] ; Carl Kriigel ^[2]
  1. [1] Quantum Signal
  2. [2] U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory
• Localización: Journal of forensic sciences, ISSN-e 1556-4029, ISSN 0022-1198, Vol. 54, Nº. 6, 2009, págs. 1393-1406
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Camouflage garments can be associated with surveillance images of a crime scene even in the absence of unique wear marks orvery high-quality images. However, the probability of an accidental association, or incidence rate, is significant. The present work describes and vali-dates a method for estimating the incidence rate based on a statistical model of the garment manufacturing process. The model was developed pri-marily for use with the current U.S. Army Combat Uniform (ACU), but can be applied to any camouflage garment. Eight garment manufacturerswere studied, and all sources of variation in the manufacturing process were characterized. The marking and spreading procedures were found to bedominant and consistent sources of variation. However, some sources of variation, in particular those because of human operators, were not consistentenough to accurately characterize. Sources of variation that could not be well-characterized were ignored in the statistical model, yielding a worst-case estimate that is an upper-bound to the true incidence rate. The model was evaluated for a variety of cases. Depending on the quality of the sur-veillance image, the manufacturing parameters, and the local population, incidence rates range from about 3% to negligibly small. The model wasvalidated by returning to one manufacturer, and sampling a large number of completed garments and estimating empirical match probabilities. Theempirical probabilities validated the estimates of the worst-case incidence rate and also demonstrated that typical incidence rates are significantlylower