AN INTEGRATED CONCEPT FOR THE PROTECTION OF PHOTOGRAPHIC AND ELECTRONIC EQUIPMENT DURING CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION USING A RISK-ORIENTED PROTOCOL
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.68302/std2026.vol1.117Keywords:
crime scene investigation, equipment protection, forensic photography, personal protective equipmentAbstract
Forensic photography is performed in uncontrolled environments where photographic and other devices are exposed to both direct impacts (blood and body fluids, dust/soot, chemical residues, water, mechanical impacts) and indirect risks, turning the equipment into a reservoir and a means of transferring traces and contamination between objects, different areas and subsequent examinations. Typically, personal protective equipment (PPE) is considered as a barrier to protect personnel, but the same barrier logic can be symmetrically applied to equipment through different layers of protective coatings, touch interface control, zoning (HOT/WARM/COLD), role separation, sealing before transport and staged decontamination. This report proposes a protocol that combines physical contamination control with digital integrity control (metadata, controlled transfer, hashing) so that images and devices are processed in a defensible manner within the framework of quality management.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Georgi Georgiev, Stefko Burdzhiev
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
