Forensic Spoorology: Seeing and Understanding Human Behavior through Observation, Classification and Interpretation of Spoor Evidence
Abstract
Humans have used traditional tracking "skills" to follow a quarry (human or animal) since the beginning of existence. "Visual Tracking, at its very basic level is the natural predatory hunting instinct of man." Even with this history, the sophistication of spoor (track, trackway) observation, classification, and interpretation has only recently within the last thirty years addressed the "why" of scientific enquiry as to human behavior and its influences on spoor evidence? Tracking "necessity" has decreased perceptually with the complexities of human movement patterns during the period of industrialization, but tracking "education" has increased reacquainting the professional fields of military, law enforcement, and search and rescue as to the who, what, when, and where, which is registered in any substrate (earth surface soil or vegetation) scene. This tracking education, although pervasive today, has not addressed in any sophistication the scientific processes of human behavioral influences on spoor evidence [cognitive behavioral brain-bound traits, gait sequential body-bound traits, weight convergence action-bound traits]. Thus, gait footfall sequences are encryptions that can only be exploited, analyzed, and disseminated properly by experienced trackers. This researcher has designed a modeling-based representation for overall decryption of primary movement patterns and secondary movement patterns that facilitates observation, classification, and interpretation of human behavior (locomotor and psychomotor) through spoor-chain signatures.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Jun 10, 2011
- Accession Number
- ADA547422
Entities
People
- Tyron J. Cunningham
Organizations
- United States Army Command and General Staff College