Marshalling situation-based evidence in identity cases

Abstract

This paper presents an expanded framework for identification of agents in a given scenario, particularly in relation to criminal justice. This identification is centered around an id-case, a set of situations leading up to a judgment of agent identity. The id-case consists of an id-situation, where the actual judgment is made, and a number of resource situations, which support the id-situation. The notion of situations used is based on Barwise and Perry's situation theory and expressed using semantic web notation. Each id-case corresponds to a justification-based mass function, which can be combined with other mass functions using Dempster-Shafer theory. This paper explores the relation between the id-situations, which provide similarity measures that serve as a basis for an initial mass function, and resource situations, which can modify that mass function in a number of ways.