Interpretation of Ignitable Liquid Residues in Fire Debris Analysis: Effects of Competitive Adsorption, Development of an Expert System and Assessment of the False Positive/Incorrect Assignment Rate.

摘要

The three oals of this report were: 1. To investigate the effect of competitive adsorption of substrates typically found in fire debris on the classification by ASTM E1618 methodology, 2. To develop and validate an expert system for assisting forensic analysts in classifying ignitable liquid residues in fire debris, and 3. To provide statistical evaluation of error rates for experienced fire debris analysts in reviewing case files of gas chromatograph-mass spectrometry data for identifying and classifying ignitable liquid residues in simulated fire debris. An additional side project was undertaken to determine the best location of sampling fire debris from apparent pour patterns.