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Preface

Crime investigation invariably needs reconstruction of the past events for the sake of fining the truth and for supporting the legal actions. The effectiveness and accuracy of the past event reconstructing will decide the versatility of the process. Reconstructing is a big challenge as the investigator will not be having a comprehensive view of the overall picture, also he will not be having enough information, will not be knowing whether the information available is complete or not. Crime investigator need to accurately consolidate all the information available, should able to judge the overall picture and meet the objectives of the investigation accurately. It is a skillful as well as challenging task too. In a criminal investigation, there exist three different types of reconstructing, the incident reconstructing, the event reconstructing and evidence reconstructing(Arnes,2017). The incident reconstructing will normally involve an investigation into incidents like accidents, blasting, etc. Event reconstructing will work to investigate the relations between different events and also will work for connecting the links between different pieces of evidence, the sequence of events, etc(Amato,2017). Physical evidence reconstructing will work for finding the traces of the items like equipment related to the bombing, blood traces, glass fragments, items that can be stripped for DNA analysis, etc. In any case, the following part of the discussion will focus on event restructuring, based on a variety of sources like information from people, from records, physical evidence, etc. Further, as per the necessity, other related data is also discussed with. In a systematic attempt for even restructuring, there is considerable focus on the aspects like deductive and inductive reasoning, physical evidence, scientific methods, and their interrelationship as well. The report presents in detail the event reconstruction procedures based on the information collected from the people directly or indirectly involved in the crime event, based on the information collected from one or more physical evidence available at the crime scene location as well based on the records created at the site. The discussion is presented with the typical procedures needed to understand and the steps needed for reconstructing the events. In each of the process, the discussion included the need for validation of the hypothesis created based on the observations developed from the event and the happenings. There is also a listing of the tools and techniques being employed for digital crime related event reconstruction.

Overview of event reconstruction and its significance

Event reconstruction is the process of reconstructing the entire event on the crime scene using all the information available on the crime scene (Becker, 2018). Vast information and several events reconstruction is necessary to get a clear idea of the events that have occurred during a particular period of time. The significance of event reconstruction rests in its potential to yield sufficient evidence to support the investigative process. Further, the evidence created during the crime investigation is expected to meet the standards and legal requirements of the courts, they need to be reproducible; verifiable as well should meet the needs of validation. Hence the event reconstruction needs to be systematic and should meet the demands of the criminal investigation procedures. Three major sources of information that can be employed for event reconstruction include people, physical evidence and records as well. Specific aspects that the event reconstruction work does focus on are the sequence, direction, relation, identification, and condition.

Event reconstruction (Chabot et al., 2015) from the information given by the people:

At the outset information provided by the people will be of great use in reconstructing the events of the past. The information obtainable from the people witnessed the event makes up the primary source of information. Even if the people have been involved in the event, then the first-hand account of the information obtained from these people will make up valuable primary information for the reconstruction of the event. Event reconstruction makes up a vital source of information in truth finding and for evidence collection in the crime investigation procedures. Apart from the information available from the participant directly involved in the event, even the other experts who provided information from their expertise relevant to their domain will be useful for constructing meaningful inferences for crime investigation.

A comprehensives collection of information from all the available resources will be necessary for the construct of the event. During the same process, it is very much required to follow a systematic procedure to generate more accurate and precise event construction. The following are the typical steps to be followed for formulating an overview of the event.

1. Collect all the possible information from the source(people who do have direct involvement in the event or indirect involvement and do possess relevant information)
2. Document the information collected from these people sources
3. Work on to evaluate the information collected so from multiple aspects to validate the information collected.
4. Create a hypothesis based on the critical examination of the sources of the information and the information collected so. 

5. Validation of the hypothesis, this need to be done employing a range of evidence available from the crime scene and from other expert advices.

6. Once the testing or validation of the hypothesis is done an effective representation of the same will be performed to create the event reconstruction.

Typically the events thus reconstructed will provide inferences like how the events have occurred, or likely to have occurred, unlikely to have occurred or even not have occurred in the given manner. This evidentially supported event construction will be of use as evidence in subsequent event construction practices.

Employing evidence for event reconstruction

Physical evidence is very broad element and information from evidence can be of great use in reconstructing the past event and for validation of the hypothesis created by other methods of the reconstruction processes. Following are some of the commonly employed evidence for reconstruction requirements.

Strains of the blood

Blood and blood stain pattern analysis: There is much to do with the blood and blood strains available in the crime scene. Evaluation and testing of the blood strains can work on to identify the victim as well the offender in the crime sceneü

The position and location of the victim can be determined during the crime occurrence from the blood strains and patterns. This can help on to create the events of the crimes as well will work for validation of the events at the sites.

The position and location of the offender can also get verified and identified in the event reconstruction process.
Victim/offender movement in the sight during the crime scene or in the aftermath of the crime scene can be reconstructed using the blood strains at the sight.

The particular weapon employed for the crime can be investigated by identification of the blood patterns and the blood stains on the floor.

Documents

Documents fromü the crime scene can be in the form of shredded format, they can be reconstructed to create the documents that can be of use to create the crime scene.

Obliterated writing on the crime scene can be obtained from the documents at the site.

Fire Arms

The trajectory of the firearm and bullets can be found at the site.

The shooting distance from the site can be identified much easily.
Position of the location of the victim can be found from the site.
The series or the sequence of the shots made can be identified from the site.
The direction of the attacks made at the site can be investigated.

Possibility of the wounds created by self-infliction and the type of weapon used will form important evidence for crime event reconstruction.

Functional evidence

If the weapon has not performed properly, then it can rise to questions like whether the wound is caused by the same weapon or the other. Functional evidence of the weapon will provide this information.

Other aspects like the TV or coffee on the table (indicates the time of the event and the condition of the victim at the time of the event) - TV playing in the scene room indicates that the event has occurred at the time of victim watching the TV.

Also working out the functional evidence of the door and the windows locking properly will help to deduce other activities correctly or not?

Items as evidence from the site

The glass if is available in the broken state, the direction of the breakage and impact indicate where the damage has occurred to the glass and from which direction.

The sequence of the shots, from which direction they have occurred and what is the impact of the same can be deducted from the investigation of the glass breakage and other related aspects.

Tyre tracks will indicate the victim or the offender drive condition and the actual movement and direction of travel. Also, the vehicle employed for the movement.

Ligature

Ligature evidence will help to construct link between serial events, will provide assistance in linking the occupation of the offender in the event construction process.

Pathological evidence

Whether the death is suicide, homicide or natural or accidental can be indicated in the due course of time.
Time of death can be deducted from the case scenario.
The weapon employed for killing can be deducted and validated

Physical match

Reassembly of the events like matching the broken pieces of the weapons will help to investigate the actual cause of the accident like reassembly of the broken parts of the weapon works on to investigate the cause of the accident(Example bomb, vehicle lamps, glasses, etc)

Relations evidence

Location of the other items at the site can help on to investigate the specifics of the crime.ü

Even for the reconstruction of the event from the collection of the evidence the following sequence of standard procedures to be employed,
1. Recognize the particular evidence and validate whether it can be a reliable and potential contributor

2. Document the evidence carefully with maximum precision and accuracy
3. Collection of the evidence is needed for further preservation, photographs at the sconce for the evidence orientation, etc to be collected.

4. Evaluate the evidence and the quality of the inferences made from the evidence
5. Develop a hypothesis from the observations created from the evidence and from its inferences back to the actual scene creation.

6. Create and test the hypothesis created in the due course of time.
7. Once the hypothesis is validated from other supporting information collected from the site, the observations can be validated.
8. From all the information collected from this, event reconstruction needs to be verified (Houck et al., 2017).

Event Reconstruction from the records

Records can provide significant inferences to the crime event reconstruction. Contemporary domains of operations involve records of several kinds and most of them will be used to collect pertaining information for crime scene creation (Horswell, 2016). For example, the records of the transactions entered in the accounting software can be useful evidence while investigating the accounting frauds in the crime investigation processes.

A biometric log entry records into the conference room can provide important inferences related to the information about the number of people present in the location during the crime scene investigation process.

In the case of accidents on the site records like the indication of the odometer readings from the site locations, speedometer reading on the crashed vehicle makes up important inferences to the actual accident occurrence.

In case of accidents, contemporary vehicle block box records and the data recorders can provide valuable insights into the occurrence at the accident sites.

Date loggers in the components like engine Control module will provide important information on the events shaping the accident. Such data records make up an important contribution to the event reconstruction.

All such information can be of good use in the reconstruction processes and for investigation of the actual facts in the scenario inspection.

Event reconstruction from the records typically contains the following steps of procedures

1. Evaluation of the record obtained during the process.
2. Working out to inspect the actual quality of the record and its aptitude to meet the requirements
3. Documenting the findings from the record comprehensively
4. Analyzing critically the information collected from the record.
5. Evaluating the information collected from the record.
6. Drawing out the hypothesis based on the information collected from the records.
7. Validating and writing the opinions from other findings collected during the same process.
8. Finally proposing a possible event and reconstructing the same.

Recent trends in Event reconstruction (Technology Advancements)

There are remarkable trends seen in the event reconstruction in recent years. Information technology outbreaks and developments worked considerably to develop better inferences for event reconstruction. Also, Digital crime investigations required a new set of tools for identification of the possible crimes and for reducing the causes and other possible information from the crime scene (James et al., 2015).

In digital crimes, the evidence and the event marks on the kernel normally will disappear once the computer is off and it may need other alternative modes for collection of information from the incident (Osterburg, 2013).

There are several developments in the digital forensics enabled with the development of the information technology applications in recent years. For example, extracting automatic timing from the disk images is a very useful tool. Events both of higher level and lower level significance can be created from these incidents.

A range of digital tools is available to dig the events in the investigation of digital crime. Examples include Sanssift, volatility, crowd strike crowd response, Linux dd, Caine, ExifTool, FTK imager, etc (Sun et al.,2015).

Other classified tools for digital forensics investigation include Disk and Data capture tools, File viewers, File analysis tools, Registry analysis tools, Internet analysis tools, Email analysis tools, Mobile devices analysis tools, OS analytics tools, Network Forensics tools, Database forensics tools, etc(Palmer,2018).

Technological advancements mainly paved the way to employ a range of digital tools for the sake of event reconstruction practice. There are still several challenges in the pathway for further relying on the technologies for this purpose. Some of the immediate challenges include variation in the footprint formats available for the process of further investigation of digital crimes. Problems in synchronizing the data from different sources create problems of reliance as there is a chance that different devices employ a different type of time formats. Semantic challenges include representation of the same event from different devices in different formats(Khan et al.,2016).

In any case, the recent approaches in the event reconstruction in the digital forensics include validation of the approaches from multiple sources. Automated tools will work to collect the events from footprint sources and will be aligned with the timelines.

Also other challenges the digital tools are facing at present include meeting the criteria of acceptance as set by the judicial system for accepting the approaches as reliable evidence for decision making in the courts.

Conclusion

Event reconstruction of the past event makes up an important procedure in the crime investigation process. The findings from this exercise will be of use in developing insights to validate the findings from the crime occurrence. Typical findings like the cause of the crime, the criminal and the consequences of the crime, etc can be recorded very precisely by developing the right hypothesis in the entire exercise. Further, the hypothesis generation can be of good use in making valid and convincing inferences to justice for enabling proper sentencing procedures(soltani& Seno,2017). In any case, the most commonly employed techniques in this regard include employing information from the people, records and physical evidence as well. Though the skill in identification of the evidence or the record or the particular information from the person does vary from time to time, the actual precision and reliance on the information obtained and analysis tools being employed as well as the inferences drawn from the event will be of use in drawing right inferences. The effectiveness of the same will decide the accuracy of the process and the findings as well. Reconstruction of the past event and its coherence with the actual scene will decide the accuracy of the process. Further, the events information, the sequence of the events happening, gaps in the events and the final comprehensive interweaving of the entire picture will depend on the actual efficiency of the event reconstruction process. Both the procedures employed and the expertise of the forensic investigator plays a crucial role in getting better outcomes in this scenario. Each and every piece of information whether big or small can potentially provide valuable information and insights into the actual scene happened in the case. Information technology enabled digital forensics tools are diverse and highly versatile too. They are range of tools available in this regard at present, however still there is lack of perfect validation and the reliance on some of the tools due to practical challenges, but still they are evolving further to meet the current challenges. Automatic sequencing and creation of the past events is the most versatile development happened in this domain for crime scene investigation. If the tools are the results are unreliable, they cannot be employed for the betterment of the crime scene investigation process. They cannot be employed for the sake of consideration in the court. Both the digital crimes as well as non-digital crime investigation needs event construction which is more reliable and only such process can reduce the total events occurring and this, in fact, can be of great usage for constraining the crimes(Lillis et al.,2016). A reliable and dependable framework for event reconstruction which continuously evolves to meet the operational requirements is the need of the hour (James et al.,2015). Further, it is possible to have reliable and consistent results only when there are collective efforts by the investigator, usage of right tools, backed by proper expertise and talent of the professional.