Title

Progress Toward the Determination of Correct Classification Rates in Fire Debris Analysis

Authors

Authors

E. E. Waddell; E. T. Song; C. N. Rinke; M. R. Williams;M. E. Sigman

Comments

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Abbreviated Journal Title

J. Forensic Sci.

Keywords

forensic science; fire debris; gas chromatography-mass spectrometry; multivariate statistics; discriminant analysis; chemometrics; GAS CHROMATOGRAPHY/MASS SPECTROMETRY; DISCRIMINANT-ANALYSIS; IGNITABLE; LIQUIDS; GASOLINE; IDENTIFICATION; SPECTRA; Medicine, Legal

Abstract

Principal components analysis (PCA), linear discriminant analysis (LDA), and quadratic discriminant analysis (QDA) were used to develop a multistep classification procedure for determining the presence of ignitable liquid residue in fire debris and assigning any ignitable liquid residue present into the classes defined under the American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) E 1618-10 standard method. A multistep classification procedure was tested by cross-validation based on model data sets comprised of the time-averaged mass spectra (also referred to as total ion spectra) of commercial ignitable liquids and pyrolysis products from common building materials and household furnishings (referred to simply as substrates). Fire debris samples from laboratory-scale and field test burns were also used to test the model. The optimal model's true-positive rate was 81.3% for cross-validation samples and 70.9% for fire debris samples. The false-positive rate was 9.9% for cross-validation samples and 8.9% for fire debris samples.

Journal Title

Journal of Forensic Sciences

Volume

58

Issue/Number

4

Publication Date

1-1-2013

Document Type

Article

Language

English

First Page

887

Last Page

896

WOS Identifier

WOS:000321491200006

ISSN

0022-1198

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