FDAE_AI_BDA : Special Issue on Forensics Data Analytics Enhancement via Artificial Intelligences and Big Data Analytics

Dear Colleagues, 

With the rapid development and integration of new technologies, crimes in today’s connected world are committed not only in the physical realm but, equally or more commonly, in cyberspace. Despite the development of new methods to prevent cyber attacks, the amount of actual data affiliated with crimes has increased dramatically. Traditionally, personal computers, powerful servers, and mobile phones were considered the main source of data processed in digital investigations. However, the changing nature of our world has brought forth previously unrecognized concepts like a variety of smart applications, autonomous systems, and intelligent societal services. All these simplify everyday tasks and facilitate societal needs, while at the same time bringing new vulnerabilities, attack vectors and the previously unforeseen consequences of attacks to life. The steady increase in digital storage size over the last decades has resulted in terabytes of data used in a single household, not to mention large electronic services. This increase in storage space had a negative impact on timely results for digital investigations as it can take up to several hours simply to image the hard drive, not to mention file carving and normal forensic analysis. Moreover, Internet of Things nodes and CCTV cameras create a large source of affiliated crime data, containing possible traces and circumstantial evidence in addition to direct evidence. Therefore, the Big Data paradigm is omnipresent in every aspect of crime investigations, creating obstacles for agencies expected to maintain public order, safety, and security. Therefore, there is a strong need for advanced data analytics to aid crime investigations in cyber and physical worlds containing large-scale data, which requires novel approaches for more efficient and effective automated processing and reasoning.