THE CONTRIBUTION OF TECHNOLOGY STANDARDIZATION IN FORENSIC PROCESS AUTOMATION TO FORENSIC TEST ACCURACY:
A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW
Ali Almessabi
Institute of Technology Management And Entrepreneurship, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, 76100, Malaysia
*Corresponding Author, Email: almus3bi@hotmail.com Massila Kamalrudin
Doctor, Institute of Technology Management And Entrepreneurship, Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, 76100, Malaysia
ABSTRACT
Forensic and laboratory practices are going through various levels of automation and efficiencies with new applications of technology. Technology has increasingly gained the reputation as suitable and efficient for the analysis, tracking and profiling of forensic evidence. Nonetheless, no insight exits on the overall orientation of effectiveness in terms of the contribution of standardization in technology to the accuracy of forensic tests. The main aim of this study is to assess how forensic performance accuracy can be achieved through technology standardization in forensic process automation. A systematic literature review is conducted in a structural manner to arrive at papers in this area. These scholarly papers are then discussed with regards to overall findings and components of technology in place. Generally, Studies on technology automation standardization have focused in this area in relation with case management, sample management and staff competency. Technology standardization remains critical to data exchange, supervision of IDs and overall upgrade of intelligence towards test accuracy. The subjects of consistency and transferability is nearly common to all papers in this area, spurring from the need for some amount of technology standardization and automation in forensic work. It is concluded that standardization does improve overall forensic test accuracy replicability, transferability, easy supervision and data exchange in the face of increased data exchange across institutions and on the international platform.
Keywords: Automation, Technology, Standardization, Forensics Tests, Accuracy.
I. Introduction
Forensic and laboratory practices are going through various levels of automation and efficiencies with new applications of technology [1]. Technology has increasingly gained the reputation as suitable and efficient for the analysis, tracking and profiling of forensic evidence. The need to ensure improved efficiency, quality, reduced cost and minimum response time in forensic laboratory activity is critical for the successful adoption of technology in forensic sciences [2] [3]. A high amount of resources is therefore invested into the reliability of forensic engineered systems; however, severe cost overruns in are incurred, and these systems are usually far from the performance of their designated duties. These challenges trigger the new need for a technology standardization [4]. Standardization across forensic technology is critical to significantly improve the workability, accuracy and effectiveness of forensic technology systems.
II. Review Method
The Systematic Literature Review (SLR) was conducted in accordance with key standards proposed by Walia and Carver [5] and in accordance with the PRISMA SLR Methodology [6]. It consists of three main stages; the planning, conducting and reporting phases. In addition, there was the need to adopt objective, independent and reliable measures as recommended by Baumeister [7]. Important programs employed include Zotero Reference Manager and StArt SLR Analysis program as recommended by Walia and
Carver [5]. StArt remains one of the few SLR program that covers all areas of study identification, selection and extraction.
A. Planning the Review
1. The Research Question
The research question of the review was formulated using the Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcomes and Context (PICOC) criteria originally proposed by Kitchenham and Charters [8] as presented in Table 1.
Based on these criteria, the research question of the SLR is presented as follows:
“What is the overall contribution of technology standardization in Forensic Process Automation to forensic test accuracy?”
Primary motivation to answer this research question is to identify the direction of evidence surrounding standardization in Forensic Process Automation.
Table 1: Summary of PICOC
2. Developing the Review Protocol
Search source criteria definition is presented in Table 2.
Table 2: Criteria Definition
PICOC Criteria
Population Forensic Process Automation Intervention Standardization
Comparison Existing technologies used for forensic testing
Outcomes Prediction of accuracy forensic test
Context E m p i r i c a l s t u d i e s i n academia and industry (Only Peer-reviewed)
Criteria Definition S e a r c h
S o u r c e s Selection
- Articles (Only peer- reviewed articles considered Keywords are first inspected in title and abstract at the selection stage
- A total of 9 Electronic Databases were considered Language English
Y e a r o f
Publication Focused on 2008 – 2018 (10 years old papers). Latest Papers was critical to gain insight on recent evidence and latest developments in the area of technology standardization in forensics.
Quality criteria were also set to include 8 main areas presented in Table 3 below.
Table 3: Quality Criteria
Nine main databases were considered; these include ScienceDirect, Springer Link, Springer Open, SAGE, Oxford Journals, Emeralds Insight, EBSCOHost, IEEE Xplore and Google Scholar as a bibliographic database.
The inclusion and exclusion criteria of the review were installed to ensure that only papers that covered the keywords were written in English language and was peer reviewed were included in the study. For the keyword, the following keywords were run on the databases; “Forensic Process Automation Standardization”, “standardized Automated processing of forensic” and “Forensic procedure automation standardization” using various Boolean phrases as permitted on the academic database.
B. Conducting the Review
After the search for relevant academic papers, the following were observed as presented in Table 4.
Table 4: Search Results
Notes: * less duplicates
** 4.0 refers to the research question of this paper, whereas the other numbers refer to other research questions which are not covered in this paper.
S/N Quality Criteria Definition QA1 Clearly defined objective [9]
QA2 Well addressed context QA3 Clearly stated findings
QA4 Good rationale or significance [10]
QA5 Research-based paper [9]
QA6 Unique contributions of the research QA7 E m p i r i c a l a s s e s s m e n t s a n d
evaluations
QA8 Clearly defined limitations
Database 1.0 2.0 3.0 4.0** Final*
ScienceDirect 55 243 83 159 512
Springer Link 47 98 108 134 297
Springer Open 3 4 0 1 6
SAGE 17 8 18 9 46
Oxford Journals 47 13 254 270 545
Emeralds Insight 4 0 0 6 9
EBSCOHOST 1 1 1 0 3
IEEE Xplore 0 0 0 0 0
Search Results 174 367 464 579 1418
Papers were first selected based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria originally set, selected papers were then extracted for further analysis. Overall flowchart of the SLR based on the PRISMA Method is presented in Figure 1 below.
C. Reporting the Review
The data extracted from the 10 papers (Figure 1) were used to formulate answers to the research question of the SLR.
!
Figure 1: Flowchart of SLR based on PRISMA
III.Review Results A. Findings
Quality criteria of the various scholarly papers are presented in Table 5.
Table 5: Quality Assurances and Extraction
Note: All Papers in the table were accepted in terms of status
To rate the papers based on the quality criteria, the various quality scores were awarded where 0 means the quality criteria were not met by the paper, 0.5 means it was partially met, and 1 means it was fully met.
Same was awarded for all the 8 quality criteria originally presented in Table 3. The average of the quality scores awarded to any paper across the 8 criteria, was then averaged to arrive at the quality assurance score presented in Table 5. The quality scores presented in Table 5 is an indication of a high level of quality of selected papers as none of them had an average score of 0.5 or below. Since all 10 papers passed the quality test, no paper was excluded at this stage of the analysis. However, a critical look was offered to the technology component and context of the papers.
Table 6: Technology Component and Contexts Analysis Paper
ID Authors Results
[11] Jeuniaux et al., [11] 0.688 [12] Andersen et al., [12] 0.688
[13] Guale et al., [13] 0.688
[14] Deeb et al., [14] 0.688
[15] Nisbet et al., [15] 0.688 [16] Casey et al., 2017 [16] 0.563 [17] James & Gladyshev [17] 0.750
[18] Yeow et al., [18] 0.750
[19] Li et al., [19] 0.750
[20] Thanakiatkrai et al., [20] 0.813
Paper ID Technology Components Context
[11] Sample Management, Case Management, Completeness, Correctness, Traceability and
Usability
Managing records related to forensic DNA identification
[12] Sample management, Integration and
No manual intervention Toxicological analysis of whole blood samples in forensics
[13] Enhance testing (Complex items), Auto screening (less manual
intervention)
Automated solid-phase extraction to purify a wide array of analytes involving stimulants,
benzodiazepines, opiates etc.
[14] Customization (Simultaneous
quantification) Drug abuse, Toxicological analysis and therapeutic drug monitoring [15] Higher speed, High sample
throughput and Rapidity Psychoactive substances derived from phenethylamines in recreational abuse.
Ref [11] considered the context of DNA based judicial records, the legal and institutional aspects of forensic work are strongly linked and cannot be separated in judicial dealings. Technology automation across case and sample management and other individual processes induces correctness, completeness, correctness and help remove duplicates. Standardization of technology helps establish reports that meet set criteria whilst ensuring usability.
The area of sample and case management have attracted high attention with regards to the automation of processes, with little or no human intervention [11] [12] [13] [14] [20]. A few papers have focused on the automation of decisions involved in forensic tests, mainly surrounding the automation of the human element in forensic work [17] [18]. Other papers focused solely on automation with emphasis on the characteristics and abilities of the technology [19]. The focus on unique forensic processes such as speed [15], reporting [11] [18], and information exchange [16] were also spotted. Even though forensics and forensic standardization were common to all considered papers, these were presented in unique and equally complex contexts.
B. Discussion and Implication of Review Results
Studies generally observed technology automation in diverse context with casework being one of the main areas where technology automation was implemented. In certain events, automation was implemented in a mixed context of both sample management and case management [11]. Automation was observed as critical to the reporting and DNA Judicial records management due to the benefits associated with this.
The imposition of administrative and technology standardization remains critical to data exchange, supervision of IDs and overall upgrade of intelligence [11].
Predominantly, studies focused on the forensic context with different technology systems. Exploring deeper into the area of sample management, automated robotic setups have proven to achieve a high level of accuracy using standardized laboratory measures to ensure consistency and transferability [12].
In certain cases, accuracy focused on a variety of areas such as the validation of sample and mainly toxicological analysis and casework monitoring [13]. Correlation remains one of the main forms of analysis conducted by the papers to assess sample accuracy. Focus on automation and standardization does not imply that the entire chain of processes may be automated, or the entire module of technology is standardized across the board. Both high and low levels of automation and standardization were recorded [12] [13] [17] [18] [19].
[16] Information exchange exchanging cyber-investigation
information and interoperability of cyber in forensic applications
[17] Decision making Digital forensic investigators’ investigation and decision processes; analysis based on an
enhanced preview [18] Decision making, Artificial
intelligence, Intelligent auto reporting Case-based reasoning (CBR) is in forensic science
[19] Automation DNA profiling aim to identify perpetrators,
missing family members and disaster victims in forensic investigations
[20] APP to detect blood stain (no human
intervention) Smartphone cameras in combination with low- cost illumination system as a tool to estimate
the age of bloodstains.
One of the strengths of automation and standardization in the area of forensics is the simultaneous quantification and reporting of forensic samples [14]; an activity that would take experts several hours and even days to complete. In a more advanced observation, the quantification of different samples is made possible by identifying grounds for internal standards based on the post-extraction addition approach.
Aside from case and sample management, one area forensic experts have sought to instil objectiveness is the area of case reasoning and decision making [17] [18]. The areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and intelligent auto reporting using Case-based reasoning (CBR) has increasingly gained popularity to reduce the amount of work experts are tasked to perform [18].
Out of the context of DNA to the area of cyber forensics, attention is offered to the role of technology standardization in facilitating exchange across fields [16]. Technology standardization facilitates interoperability and helps structure, represent and share details about how cyber-information was handled, transferred, processed, analysed, and interpreted [16]. This area has remained a key challenge to governments and global organizations alike in the quest to associate a cybercrime with specific individuals or persons.
The unique application of standardization in an everyday technology to aid forensics with the help of the smartphone was also established [20]. This presents a unique application of an everyday technology to the area of forensics.
IV. Conclusion
It is concluded that standardization does improve forensic test accuracy to a significant extent. The contribution of technology standardization to forensic tests was within acceptable range for most of the empirical evidence analysed in the selected papers. It is concluded that technology standardization ensures accuracy through replicability, transferability, easy supervision and data exchange in the face of increased data exchange across institutions and on the international platform.
V. Acknowledgement
The systematic literature review went through a tedious process of search, identification, selection and extraction. Without the help of others, we would not have been able to complete it in time. Special thanks to Mrs Wafa Altayari for her valuable support throughout the stages.
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