Cold Case - Solved & Unsolved: Use of digital tools and data science techniques to facilitate cold case investigation

On average 125 murders take place in the Netherlands on an annual basis. However, not all such incidents can be solved. Currently there are more than 1700 unsolved homicide cases on the shelf at the National Police that classify as a 'cold case'. Investigation into these types of capital offenses takes a lot of time, money, and capacity. Applications of the current working method and available techniques are very labor-intensive and time-consuming. In addition, the pressure on the executive Police officers is high-from the Police organization, the Public Prosecution Service, the media, the next of kin, as well as society in general. From an investigative point of view, it is relevant to provide direction in the criminal investigation and formulate and evaluate various case scenarios, while reducing a risk of 'tunnel vision'. From a scientific point of view, more research into homicide cases in the Netherlands is of eminent importance. Remarkably little has been written in scientific literature about this type of crime. The project 'Cold Case: Solved & Unsolved' focused on the use of open, publicly available information sources to collect the data and gain more insight into homicide cases in The Netherlands. Applicability of various modern techniques, such as web-scraping, API software and Artificial Intelligence (AI) was explored to facilitate and automate data collection and processing tasks. A first concept of a 'smart' database was proposed, combining a web-based database platform with AI modules to filter and (pre-)process the data. With further development and training of AI modules, such a database might eventually support data-driven generation and/or prioritization of investigative scenarios. The data collected in the process was used in three scientific studies aimed at uncovering the relationships and patterns in the homicide data for The Netherlands.