Abstract
DNA is a major and essential identification tool for mass fatality
incidents including the hundreds of thousands of victims of the 2004
Indian Ocean tsunami. Mathematical complications characteristic of
this sort of mass fatality include prevalence of related victims, the
many races represented among the victims, and various identification
modalities in tandem with DNA. Four mathematical problems of interest,
discussed in this paper, are: accounting for other quantifiable
factors, like geography (§I); accounting for related victims when only
one is found (confidence in the identity is depressed) (§II.A);
accounting for related victims when several are found (identifications
reinforce one another) (§II.B); accounting for the minor races that
may be represented among the victims (mostly unnecessary) (§III).
Keywords: DNA identification, Mass fatality, Kinship, Tsunami
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