Geoforensics By Alastair Ruffell, Jennifer McKinley

Alastair Ruffell, Jennifer McKinley. Geoforensics
Wiley | 2008-10 | 0470057343 / 9780470057346 | 346 pages | PDF | 6 Mb

This book has at its core the application of selected geoscience techniques to criminal
(domestic, international, terrorist, humanitarian, environmental, fraudulent)
investigations of what happened, where and when it occurred and how and why it took place

The book's opening ought to have a more precise definition (than that above), but it does not because the applications of Earth science methods to different problems (of a criminal, humanitarian, disaster-related nature) are so wide-ranging that the definition would probably end up being as long as the book itself. The text is not a book on criminalistics, geography, geophysics, or microfossils. As a result, specialists in any one of these fields are going to be disappointed or angry that the discipline they work in is not covered comprehensively enough.

This book is a comprehensive introduction to the application of geoscience to criminal investigations. Clearly structured throughout, the text follows a path from the large-scale application of remote sensing, landforms and geophysics in the first half to the increasingly small-scale examination of rock and soils to trace amounts of material. The two scales of investigation are linked by geoscience applications to forensics that can be applied at a range of dimensions. These include the use of topographic mapping, x-ray imaging, geophysics and remote sensing in assessing whether sediment, rocks or concrete may have hidden or buried materials inside for example, drugs, weapons, bodies.

This book describes the wider application of many different geoscience-based methods in assisting law enforcers with investigations such as international and national crimes of genocide and pollution, terrorism and domestic crime as well as accident investigation. The text makes a clear link to the increasingly important aspects of the spatial distribution of geoscience materials (be it soil sampling or the distribution of mud-spatter on clothing), Geographic Information Science and geostatistics.

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