LMML: Initial Developments of an Integrated Environment for Forensic Data Visualization

Abstract

Fighting against crime is paramount to any society, maybe more today than ever before. Tools to fight and elucidate crime are rooted in forensic science. Through the autopsy of a body, we can answer a whole range of questions as to how death happened and come up with explanations and counter-measures so that the same dire circumstance does not happen again. Now, because the reports collecting the data are written manually, the recording of the data collected through traditional autopsy still is a cumbersome, time-consuming task. Our framework, based on a mark-up language (that we dubbed "LMML") to store, describe and arrange forensic data, aims at overcoming those issues. Our contribution is twofold: the design of the syntax and semantics of LMML, and the conception of an interface to create, edit, analyse or query files written in that language. Thus, this framework allows quicker, smoother input of forensic data, for better automation and visualization thereof, so that they can be used by medical examiners, investigators, as well as judicial courts.