Rapid triage of diverse media devices: Boston marathon bombings: An operational case study of time critical response

The Boston marathon bombings of April 2013 in which three spectators were killed and more than 200 individuals were injured, resulted in an overwhelming influx of publicly available multimedia data that could be used to identify suspects, motives or both. Unfortunately, it is very difficult if not impossible for any number of analysts to review all the multimedia data in a timely manner. To complicate matters, many audio and video clips available online are duplicates, near duplicates or rebroadcasts of the original footage. This article describes the efforts to evaluate the efficiency of the Pixel Forensics, Inc. data triage system called TREX in a time of national crisis, when a rapid triage of the publicly available media of an event is necessary.