ABSTRACT
Disaster Victim Identification (DVI) is the term given to the procedures used to positively identify deceased victims of a multiple-casualty event (INTERPOL Disaster Victim Identification Guide 2014). In all mass fatalities the deceased need to be identified to the satisfaction of the local jurisdictional authorities, such as the coroner (in Australia and Great Britain) or the chief medical examiner (in the United States). In a domestic context forensic experts usually work as an extension of the local legal process, and individual identification goes hand in hand with a determination of cause of death. However, in mass disasters the cause of death may already be known or strongly suspected (for example, shrapnel type injury, inhalation of fire fumes), and identification therefore becomes the most difficult and resource-intensive task. Identification is, however, not just a legal requirement but has moral, ethical, and financial ramifications (Blau & Llill 2009), For both legal and compassionate reasons, forensic specialists need to ascertain how many individuals are represented and, as far as possible, match the remains against available records of known persons involved in the disaster.
