Ground penetrating radar (GPR) investigations have the potential to non-destructively detect buried or hidden targets and are therefore often used in forensic research. This study presents a particular application of GPR methods to search for a missing person in a specific subsurface environment: a natural cave. The search for missing people in Italy is a problematic and delicate task that needs improvement. Results of this study highlight not only the ability to detect both hollow and forensic targets, but also precisely locate and define their geometries. Moreover, GPR findings efficiently focus archaeological excavation and body recovery in an exact area and help to minimise time digging in erroneous places.

Rosa Maria Di Maggio, Laurance J. Donnelly, Khudooma Saeed Al Naimi, Pier Matteo Barone, Fabio Augusto Da Silva Salvador, Lorna Dawson, Roger Dixon, Rob Fitzpatrick, Olga Gradusova, Ekaterina Nesterina, Marina Peleneva, Olga Ushacova, Carlos Martin Molina Gallego, Duncan Pirrie, Alastair Ruffell, Jennifer McKinley, Gullermo Sagripanti, Diego Villalba, Bill Schneck, Ritsuko Sugita, Grant Wach, Ricardo Silva, and Shari Forbes. Episodes 2017;40:120-31. https://doi.org/10.18814/epiiugs/2017/v40i2/017014

The so-called ‘CSI effect’ was recently observed in the Italian judicial system. The reason for the increase in instances of this effect is the lack of a standard geo-archaeological procedure in conducting a forensic investigation. To avoid the harmful consequences of this lack of standardisation, it is necessary to develop a robust geo-archaeological protocol for use during every crime scene investigation.

Geographic profiling, or locus operandi, is a scientific approach that has been applied to forensic investigations for several years. However, it has never been applied to a phenomenon as complex as the search for missing persons. This article presents three Italian case studies in which geographic profiling was used to narrow the areas to search for missing persons. The geographical data were mapped and processed on a geographic information system platform using computational geometry analysis. However, these disappearances occurred during the Italian lockdown period, imposed to address the COVID-19 outbreak, which made the searches slower and more complex than usual.

Despite widespread concern over missing persons, there has always been little clarity on what the word “missing” means. Although the category of young runaways is, indeed, an important cluster, other popular concepts related to disappearances describe a portion of missing persons. Thus, the following question persists: What exactly does “missing” mean? In this brief communication, we would like to open a discussion about the social phenomenon of missing persons and the consequent deployment of people and techniques to find those persons. In particular, the benefits of some forensic geoarchaeological approaches that are not yet fully standardized will be highlighted, such as geographic profiling and the use of multispectral satellite images, in order to provide materials for future searching protocols.

This short communication discusses how a specific geoarchaeological remote-sensing (RS) method, such as analyzing satellite images through NDWI (Normalized Difference Water Index), can be used to aid in searching and locating persons missing in watercourses. Thanks to its high capacity to analyze changes in the surface water area, this index can remotely detect the presence of anomalies related to disappearances in water bodies and provide valuable information that can reduce the use of human resources and help pinpoint likely areas of search. Two real-life cases of missing persons in rivers in which the NDWI index was used are presented, and the results obtained are discussed, emphasizing the importance of NDWI analysis as a complementary method to different approaches, especially non-invasive and remote-sensed ones, when positively searching for missing persons.