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By Larry Drinkwater
This article is reprinted here with permission by
Imaging and Document Solutions Magazine
(February 1999 issue)
In the wake of the crash of Swissair Flight 111 in September, imaging is helping to sort through sometimes unimaginable evidence to identify victims, determine the cause of the accident and prevent future tragedies.
When Swissair Flight 111 departed from Kennedy International Airport in New York on September 2, bound for Geneva, no one could have possibly imagined what was about to occur that evening. Imaging technology is being used in new ways to help ease the grief some families were about to experience as a result of that ill-fated flight.
Shortly after take-off, the crew detected smoke in the cockpit. But before the plain could safely land in Halifax, Nova Scotia, contact with air traffic control was lost. At 9:20 PM, the MD-11 jet went down in more than 200 feet of water four miles off the small coastal town of Peggy's Cove in Nova Scotia.
The Royal Canadian Mounted Police (RCMP) and other authorities rushed to the accident scene in an attempt to rescue survivors, but the crash claimed the lives of all passengers and crew - more than 225 victims, mostly American and French nationals.
The airliner had plummeted into the cold North Atlantic waters with and impact so violent, it left little more than shattered, heat-distressed wreckage strewn across the ocean floor. The task now facing Canadian and American authorities working cooperatively at the crash site could only be described as horrific. Aircraft debris had to be recovered to determine the cause of the accident and to help ensure that an incident such as this could be avoided in the future. Most importantly, the remains of those that perished had to be recovered for positive identification. What would be considered a monumental task under normal circumstances became close to impossible.
Relying on the passenger manifest, Swissair quickly notified the next-of-kin of the likelihood that family members were on the ill-fated flight. Although the manifest is the best record of a flight's passengers, it isn't always accurate. Last minute substitutions are common, especially among airline employees. Small children sitting on the laps of their parents are not recorded since they are not ticketed and do not hold boarding passes.
Within three hours of the accident, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police dispatched Shelley Emmerson, their leading specialist for major investigations requiring imaging technology. A corporal in the Informatics Operational Support Division of the RCMP, Emmerson uses advanced computer and imaging technologies to help solve major crimes and catastrophic events. The Swissair accident presented on the most demanding investigations in his 24 years on the police force.
Distraught next-of-kin anxiously awaited confirmation of their loved one's fate. Crash investigators had no time for research and development, or experimentation with unproven technologies. Massive amounts of post-mortem information (remains, clothing, jewelry, crash site photographs, etc.) and anti-mortem information (dental records, documentation of tattoos, scars, birthmarks or fingerprints, family photographs, personal descriptions, etc.) were being accumulated.
Every piece of information h ad to be prepared, scanned, processed, data-captured, archived, retrieved and displayed or output with exceptional accuracy and speed. Minimal handling of post-mortem information by investigators was crucial. This was an information management nightmare.
A complete digital imaging and document management system capable of managing the magnitude of information being used in the investigation needed to be up and running immediately. It would have to capture and archive tend of thousands of scanned documents, records, hand-written forms, past and recent photographs, and current digital images. It would have to be able to retrieve and disseminate this stored information to at least 37 workstations at the crash site, to other Canadian investigators located at remote sites across Canada and to law enforcement officers of the FBI and several other foreign agencies.
The system was designed and implemented by Emmerson and his team of information management specialists, which included information manager Dan MacDonald, analyst Carrie Brennan, systems architect Kevin Tillman, more than 10 data entry operators and other specialists.
In his seven years handling major crimes and catastrophic events with high technology, Emmerson has developed customized application software to meet the special requirements of his investigations and analyses. For digital imaging, he uses ImageLib Corporate Suite, developed by SkyLine Tools of Woodland Hills, CA.
He praises the product's rapid deployment capabilities and comprehensive feature-set. In developing a custom digital imaging system for RCMP's Informatics division, Emmerson says he went from research and development to full production in less than 12 man hours.
In the Swissair Flight 111 investigation, ImageLib Corporate Suite is being used primarily to handle digital photographs and documents. Scanned documents are "cleaned" automatically using the products' image-processing, image-clean, and anti-aliasing technologies. The products' annotation capabilities allow notes to be added and reviewed, helping investigators to explain and better understand the rather unorthodox images that are integral to this investigation. SkyLine Tools' videolib is used to capture live video in single or multiple frames (using a video camera, VCR, or any live video source). Video clips can be stored and played as needed in the investigation.
Emmerson is using a suite of software tools that support easy integration. He developed the application software using C++ Builder from Borland (now Inprise, Scotts Valley, CA), a programming editor called Multi-Edit from American Cybernetics (Tempe, AZ), and a routines library, InfoPower 4, from Wall-2-Wall Software. These are all common development tools in the Delphi or C++ builder environments.
Emmerson developed custom document management software and utilizes a Windows NT workstation as the application server. He employed a back-end SQL relational database program, InterBase 5, from InterBase Software (Scotts Valley, CA). Crystal Reports from Seagate Software (Scotts Valley, CA) is used to prepare HTML pages on the Intranet server and for generating database reports.
The onsite systems and application are set up in a series of airplane hangers at Shearwater Military Airfield. Hardware components include Windows 95 and NT workstations, Fujitsu and Hewlett Packard scanners, and a variety of digital cameras used to capture aircraft parts, human remains and personal property from the crash site. The local telephone company ran fiber optics between the different hangers to support a WAN. Information is posted through an Intranet site using standard Web technologies, and it is accessed by and army of investigators working both at the site and at remote locations.
How is the system put to work? In passenger identification, the specifics of the post-mortem discovery (e.g., location of remains, existence of scars, birthmarks or fingerprints, presence of jewelry, available clothing, DNA tests, etc.) must all be digitally captured, explicitly described and archived/catalogued. This information must be immediately accessible for comparison with anti-mortem information provided by next-of-kin (descriptions of scars or birthmarks, family photographs, medical documentation, x-rays, etc.).
Similar demands exist when investigating the reasons for the crash. The evidence combines both aircraft debris and post-mortem information. For example, debris from the aircraft showing signs of heat distress can be associated with seat assignments information and post-mortem evidence of burns. This information must also be digitally captured, described in detail, archived/catalogued, and immediately accessible as needed for comparison with other available documentation. Extraordinary amounts of information must be promptly input (to minimize further handling), intelligently stored, efficiently managed, and easily retrieved by the hundreds of onsite and remote investigators.
By mid-December, all of the victims of the crash were positively identified - an amazing feat in light of the devastation that occurred. The technology employed by RCMP has supported the detailed study of crash site debris in determining the cause of this tragic event.
The speed, accuracy and archival reliability of the system will certainly influence future disaster investigations. Hopefully it will help pinpoint the cause of the crash and prevent future accidents.
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