CA17124 DigForASP: A European Cooperative Action for AI Applications in Police and Digital Investigations

In the frame of Police Investigations, in particular to Digital Investigations and Digital Forensics cases, data collection on “crime scene” needs further elaboration for the contextualization in the real case. The “Evidence Analysis” phase has the aim to provide objective data and suitable elaboration of these data can help the Investigators in the formulation of possible investigative hypotheses, which could later be presented as proofs of evidence in courts. Investigations with a high amount of heterogeneous data represent a huge problem for the human mind in the search for events, connections, facts or demonstrate alternative solutions. However, many investigative problems can be formalized and expressed with a mathematical approach and solved with reasonable efficiency using Artificial Intelligence and Automatic Reasoning. COST Action CA17124, called DigForASP (“DIGITAL FORensics: analysis tests through intelligent systems and practices”), financed by the European Union with the funds for “European cooperation in science and technology, Horizon 2020”, was born for the exploration, study the delicate issue of the application of Artificial Intelligence and Automated Reasoning to the investigative world, through the creation of a multidisciplinary scientific network. DigForASP, with activities in the period September 2018 - September 2022, has aims to help the human operator (Law Enforcement, Lawyers, Public Prosecutors, Judges, social scientists, criminologists) in the analysis of investigative data as well as the formulation of hypotheses for the resolution of complex cases, through Artificial Intelligence techniques available to guarantee ethic, reliability and verifiability.