Mass Fatality Incident Identification based on nuclear DNA evidence

Fabio Corradi; JMLR W&CP 9:105-112, 2010.

Abstract

This paper focuses on the use of nuclear DNA Short Tandem Repeat traits for the identification of the victims of a Mass Fatality Incident. The goal of the analysis is the assessment of the identification probabilities concerning the recovered victims. Identification hypotheses are evaluated conditionally to the DNA evidence observed both on the recovered victims and on the relatives of the missing persons disappeared in the tragical event. After specifying a set of conditional independence assertions suitable for the problem, an inference strategy is provided, treating some points to achieve computational efficiency. Finally, the proposal is tested through the simulation of a Mass Fatality Incident and the results are examined in details.