Reconstructing Ambient Temperature in Forensic Death Time Estimation
under review
- In medicolegal practice, time since death is estimated to assess alibi for homicide cases. Ambient temperature TA has a strong impact on cooling and therefore on temperature based time since death estimation (TTDE). At many crimescenes the ambient temperature TA1 is lowered instantaneously from a start value TA0 to a value TA1 at a certain time t0 during investigations due to human intervention such as window or door opening or body transport. Usually TA0 and t0 are unknown to the investigators. In this paper we focus on reconstruction of the unknown parameters TA0 and t0. Our approach is inspired by TTDE literature remarks of detecting said changes by measuring temperatures in closed compartments as e.g. cupboards or neighboring rooms of the crime scene, where TA0 could have been ‘preserved’ after t0. We aim to estimate t0 and TA0 from temperature measurements TZ(t) in closed compartments Z at times t > t0. We got results even under the most trivial assumption of Newtonian cooling for boxes filled with air, with heaps of clothes or even with books in two different experimental scenarios. Two different parameter estimators, (t0^, TA0^) using a single quadruple temperature measurement in two boxes and (t0*, TA0*) on the basis of weighted averaging the results of a series of N quadruple measurements during cooling of the two boxes respectively, were tested. Our results were partially appropriate for TTDE input. For example a sudden decline at time t0 from TA0 = 22.5°C to TA1 = 14°C of the ambient temperature in a climate chamber could be reconstructed at t = t0 + 95min with relative deviations ρt0^ = 27% and ρTA0^ = 19% of the estimators relative to t - t0 and TA0 – TA1 respectively, only based on N = 1 quadruple measurement with a span of Δt = 50min. In case of N = 200 quadruple measurements starting at t = t0 + 95min and ending at t = t0 + 295min we found for weighted mean estimators distinctively reduced relative deviations ρt0^ = 5% and ρTA0^ = 11% with the same quadruple span Δt = 50min. Further research is necessary to guarantee applicability in routine case work. We will investigate more elaborate cooling models, estimation algorithms and evaluation localization.
| Author: | Jayant Shanmugam Subramaniam, Michael Hubig, Sebastian Schenkl, Holger Muggenthaler, Steffen Springer, Martin WeiserORCiD, Jakob Sudau, Faisal Shah, Gita Mall |
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| Document Type: | Article |
| Year of first publication: | 2025 |

