The author(s) shown below used Federal funding provided by the U.S. Department of Justice to prepare the following resource: Document Title: Smokeless Powder Reference Collection and SWGFEX Smokeless Powders Database Expansion Author(s): Michael E. Sigman, Ph.D.; Mary Williams, M.S.; Dana-Marie K. Dennis, Ph.D. Document Number: 250933 Date Received: July 2017 Award Number: 2013-R2-CX-K008 This resource has not been published by the U.S. Department of Justice. This resource is being made publically available through the Office of Justice Programs’ National Criminal Justice Reference Service. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice. Smokeless Powder Reference Collection and SWGFEX Smokeless Powders Database Expansion Award No. 2013-R2-CX-K008 Author/ Principal Michael E. Sigman, Ph.D. Investigator Department of Chemistry and National Center for Forensic Science University of Central Florida PO Box 162367 Orlando, FL 32816-2367 407-823-6469 Co-Authors Mary Williams, M.S. Dana-Marie K. Dennis, Ph.D. National Center for Forensic Science University of Central Florida PO Box 162367 Orlando, FL 32816-236 i This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice Abstract In 1998, the National Research Council issued a report “Black and Smokeless Powders: Technologies for Finding Bombs and the Bomb Makers”. [1] The NRC report recommended that a comprehensive national powder database be developed, containing information about the physical characteristics and chemical composition of commercially available black and smokeless powders. An agency-independent effort to develop a smokeless powders database did not emerge until 2009, when the National Center for Forensic Science (NCFS) in collaboration with the Scientific Working Group for Fire and Explosions (SWGFEX) began work on an internet-accessible database of analytical information on smokeless powders (http://www.ilrc.ucf.edu/powders/). The database opened in early 2011 with 100 entries of legacy powders, provided by Mr. Ronald Kelly (FBI- retired). Under this research grant: (1) records for an additional 600 powders were entered into the database, (2) 100 new powders were analyzed and their records entered into the database, (3) reference collections of the 100 smokeless powders were provided, free of charge, to 50 forensic laboratories that conduct smokeless powder exams and, (4) the data corresponding to the legacy and new records were utilized in research to establish evidentiary and investigative value associated with matching records returned from a search of the Smokeless Powders Database. ii This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice Contents Executive Summary.............................................................................................................................................. 6 The Problem ....................................................................................................................................................... 6 Purpose of the Research ................................................................................................................................ 7 Research Design ................................................................................................................................................ 9 Findings and Conclusions .......................................................................................................................... 10 Implications for Policy and Practice ...................................................................................................... 11 I. Introduction..................................................................................................................................................... 12 Statement of the problem .......................................................................................................................... 12 Literature review .......................................................................................................................................... 15 Hypothesis or Rationale for the Research ........................................................................................... 20 II. Methods ............................................................................................................................................................ 20 Chemical Analysis ......................................................................................................................................... 20 Likelihood Ratio Approach to Smokeless Powder Comparisons ................................................ 21 General Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 21 Limiting smokeless powder comparisons ....................................................................................... 26 Discrete chemical and physical data .................................................................................................. 26 Continuous chemical composition data ............................................................................................ 27 Score-based Likelihood Ratio Calculations ..................................................................................... 28 Agglomerative Hierarchical Cluster Analysis ................................................................................. 28 iii This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds provided by the U.S. Department of Justice. Opinions or points of view expressed are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official position or policies of the U.S. Department of Justice Cross Validation ......................................................................................................................................... 29 Probabilistic Predictions of Manufacturers using Bayesian Networks .................................... 29 General Methodology ............................................................................................................................... 29 Discrete chemical and physical data .................................................................................................. 31 Bayes’ Theorem .......................................................................................................................................... 33 Bayesian Network ..................................................................................................................................... 34 III. Results ............................................................................................................................................................. 36 Historical Records ......................................................................................................................................... 36 New Reference Materials ........................................................................................................................... 36 Evidentiary Value of Smokeless Powder Comparisons .................................................................. 36 Discrete chemical composition ............................................................................................................ 36 Continuous chemical composition ...................................................................................................... 39 Agglomerative hierarchical cluster (AHC) analysis ..................................................................... 41 Score-based likelihood ratios (same color, shape, cluster) ...................................................... 42 Probability of a Smokeless Powder Manufacturer for Investigative Purposes ..................... 44 Conditional Independence Testing of the Smokeless Powder Random Variables .......... 44 Predicting Smokeless Powder Manufacturers using High Posterior Probabilities ......... 45 IV. Conclusions .................................................................................................................................................... 51 Discussion of Findings ................................................................................................................................. 51 Database Expansion and Reference Collection .............................................................................. 51 Evidentiary/Investigative Value of Database Searches .............................................................. 52 Probabilistic Assessment of Manufacturer ..................................................................................... 52 Implications for Policy and Practice ...................................................................................................... 53 Implications for Further Research ......................................................................................................... 53 iv This resource was prepared by the author(s) using Federal funds