RSSCSI Lab
The CSI Lab is located in the Forensic Field Lab at the Netherlands Forensic Institute. Within this test laboratory, a crime scene has been recreated. This has been fitted out with cameras and sensors that can be operated from an observation room. And there are techniques that enable you to walk interactively in 3D through a virtual crime scene.
Possibilities of the CSI Lab
It’s simply not possible to do any training at a real crime scene. Everything needs to be done correctly once and for all, according to a fixed protocol. But in the CSI Lab, it’s possible to faithfully simulate working at a crime scene within a physical and a virtual environment. This is a tremendous step forward in the way that forensic detectives can be trained. It also offers great opportunities for testing new detection techniques.And this isn’t all that the CSI Lab offers. The lab is equipped with techniques that make it possible to measure the heartrate of forensic researchers, to follow their pathways and to record images and sound. We can scientifically analyse this data, thereby gaining valuable information on developing and improving detection techniques.
In the future, the CSI Lab can also play a role in reconstructions. The availability of a three-dimensional recreation of a crime scene will help the police, the law courts, judges and legal representatives to gain an insight into the situation in which a case occurred.
New techniques
Existing techniques from outside the forensic world have been integrated into the CSI The Hague project. These offer new possibilities for examining traces of evidence. For example, we can make 3D scans at a crime scene, register heat traces and biological traces, make a record of the environment through a special pair of spectacles, and add findings and notes via an augmented reality technique. All this data can be individually made visible within a virtual environment in the CSI Lab with the aid of serious gaming techniques.Next year, the CSI Lab will undergo further development. By linking different systems to one another, all data will soon also be accessible within one single virtual environment and it will be possible to connect the different pieces of information to one another.