Time Period: 01.01.2021 - 31.12.2024
Funded by: University of Applied Sciences Mittweida
The overall aim of the project is to advance digitalization and its processes in forensics and anthropology. Both disciplines have a lot in common: Both are concerned with tracing evidence in order to reconstruct what happened in the past and answer questions relevant to the present. These traces are often fleeting, but can be permanently secured through digitization, i.e. “digitally preserved”. The methodological processes in forensics and anthropology are almost identical, only the time periods are usually longer in anthropology. The requirements and challenges of digitization in forensics are analogous to those in anthropology. The project focuses on the development of a process chain for digitizing forensic and anthropological examinations, objects and their embedding in virtual space. The aim is to create high-resolution and true-to-original digital copies that can be used as “digital twins” for further investigation in addition to illustration. The development of the process chain and evaluation of its suitability for practical use will be based on one important forensic and one anthropological example. By focusing not only on the visualization, but also on the further use of the digitized material, which leads to a sustainable and permanent preservation of the objects or traces, the project makes an important contribution to socially relevant topics such as the preservation of cultural heritage and the forensic investigation of crimes. In addition to the actual scientific work, workshops are organized and carried out for both target groups. In the field of anthropology in particular, new ways of exhibiting the finds will be sought. The representation of the digital twins in the context of exhibitions or in teaching and further education is being considered.
Project Steps
Sub-goal 1: The digitization of the Rödelheim cemetery, a series of skeletons of Napoleonic soldiers, which will be reburied in the near future and would no longer be available for research without digitization.
Sub-goal 2: The 3D reconstruction of the course of events leading up to the transportation of a female corpse in a river as a contribution to solving a current forensic case.