Broken glass is often found at crime scenes such as burglaries, assaults (where a bottle was used as a weapon) or hit and run car accidents. Forensics laboratories are able to analyse the fragments of glass to examine their physical and chemical properties – such as the elements that it is made from.
Dr Lucy uses statistical techniques such as multivariate analysis to provide a court with an estimate of the likelihood ratios, or strength of evidence, that glass fragments found on a suspect came from the same piece of glass found at the crime scene.
Dr Lucy said: “This form of evaluation of evidence is not currently used in the United Kingdom jurisdictions, but has been used to help inform criminal proceedings in several European countries – including the Netherlands and Poland."
The SAILR project is set to run until 2017 and has been funded by the European Network of Forensic Science Institutes (ENFSI).