10. The Conceptual Representation of the “Electronic Evidence” Domain

The conceptual representation of the “Electronic Evidence” domain presented in this chapter aims at building a common language to identifying, connecting and aligning all relevant concepts for the systematic and uniform application of new technologies in the collection, use and exchange of evidence. For setting the domain boundaries, a literature review is presented along with the current standards used to define and handle Electronic Evidence. These sources of information allowed to identify a first set of terms and definitions used in the top-down extraction of relevant concepts to be considered the basis for the development of the full categorization exercise. In parallel, the gathered documentation was used to apply a bottom-up strategy that foresees a semi-automatic extraction of lemmas and syntagms, using a natural language processing technique. The results of this activity allowed the identification of further terms and concepts to enrich the top-down extraction. The research team identified eight classes to represent the Electronic Evidence domain: Crime, Source of Evidence, Process, Electronic Evidence, Requirement, Stakeholder, Rule, and Digital Forensics. These main classes have been hierarchically structured in sub-classes that may be easily updated and maintained. A SKOS structure, Simple Knowledge Organization System, was chosen to represent the domain. Finally considering that one of the main focuses of the EVIDENCE Project concerns the development of a framework for data exchange between judicial actors and LEAs, the study has taken into account the exchange of both digital-born evidence and of not digital-born one.