Joint DNA-based disaster victim identification

Abstract We address computational and statistical aspects of DNA-based identification of victims in the aftermath of disasters. Current methods and software for such identification typically consider each victim individually, leading to suboptimal power of identification and potential inconsistencie...

Descripción completa

Guardado en:
Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Magnus D. Vigeland, Thore Egeland
Formato: article
Lenguaje:EN
Publicado: Nature Portfolio 2021
Materias:
R
Q
Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/0978c8fabeec49e6aeb2c59b533aabaf
Etiquetas: Agregar Etiqueta
Sin Etiquetas, Sea el primero en etiquetar este registro!
Descripción
Sumario:Abstract We address computational and statistical aspects of DNA-based identification of victims in the aftermath of disasters. Current methods and software for such identification typically consider each victim individually, leading to suboptimal power of identification and potential inconsistencies in the statistical summary of the evidence. We resolve these problems by performing joint identification of all victims, using the complete genetic data set. Individual identification probabilities, conditional on all available information, are derived from the joint solution in the form of posterior pairing probabilities. A closed formula is obtained for the a priori number of possible joint solutions to a given DVI problem. This number increases quickly with the number of victims and missing persons, posing computational challenges for brute force approaches. We address this complexity with a preparatory sequential step aiming to reduce the search space. The examples show that realistic cases are handled efficiently. User-friendly implementations of all methods are provided in the R package dvir, freely available on all platforms.