Date
July 2020
Overview
On February 27 and 28 of 2020, The National Institute of Justice (NIJ), in partnership with the Forensic Technology Center of Excellence (FTCOE) at RTI International, convened the first meeting of the Terrestrial LiDAR Scanning (TLS) Working Group for Criminal Justice Applications. The TLS Working Group (TLSWG) will support the NIJ-FTCOE’s goals of improving the practice and strengthening the impact of forensic science through rigorous technology corroboration, evaluation, and best practices dissemination.
While the use of this technology is increasing in criminal justice applications, no standardized, vendor agnostic guidelines for use are currently available for end users. The goal of the working group is to develop resources that reflect consensus-based best practices to standardize and improve the use and application of TLS in crime scene documentation and reconstruction. These deliverables will help establish a minimum standard for capture, processing, analysis, visualization, presentation, and storage of TLS data in a forensic context. These resources are intended to promote uniform implementation and use of TLS technology in practice. This will ultimately improve the practitioners’ ability to attain scientifically supportable conclusions from TLS data, ensure effective quality management procedures, and improve presentation of this information to stakeholders, including law enforcement, investigators, and the courts (e.g. prosecutors and defense attorneys, judges, and juries).
Funding for this Forensic Technology Center of Excellence report was provided by the National Institute of Justice, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.
The opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this report are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect those of the U.S. Department of Justice.
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