A0153
Title: Post-mortem interval: A functional data analysis for criminology
Authors: Davide Pigoli - King's College London (United Kingdom)
Frederic Ferraty - Mathematics Institute of Toulouse (France) [presenting]
John Aston - University of Cambridge (United Kingdom)
Anjali Mazumder - The Alan Turing Institute (United Kingdom)
Martin Hall - Natural History Museum of London (United Kingdom)
Cameron Richards - Natural History Museum of London (United Kingdom)
Abstract: When a body is discovered at a crime scene, it is necessary to determine the time since death or, more formally, the post-mortem interval (PMI). If the body has been left outdoors for a long period, forensic entomology can estimate this post-mortem interval by examining evidence obtained from the growth of insect larvae on the body. The hatching period of the larvae plays an important role in this methodology as it corresponds to the date of abandonment of the corpse (the latter being assumed to be close to the victim's death). A method is proposed for estimating the hatching date of larvae (or maggots) based on their length, the temperature profile of the crime scene, and experimental data on larval development. This method requires the estimation of a time-dependent growth curve from experiments where the larvae were exposed to a relatively small number of constant temperature profiles. As temperature influences the rate of development, a crucial step is the temporal alignment of the curves at different temperatures. A dynamic model for the time-varying temperature profiles is then proposed based on the local growth rate estimated from the experimental data. This allows for the determination of the most likely time of hatching (and hence the PMI) for a sample of larvae from the crime scene of two criminal cases.
