Investigative Methods in Forensic Civil Engineering

N. Krishnamurthy, Ph.D. Structures and Safety Consultant, Singapore

Introduction

The word forensic comes from the Latin forensis, meaning 'of or before the forum.' In Roman times, a criminal charge meant both accuser ('plaintiff') and accused ('defendant') presenting the case before a group of public individuals in the forum. This is the source of the two modern usages of the word forensic – as a form of legal evidence, and as a category of public presentation. In modern use, 'forensic' is synonymous with 'legal' or ‘court-related’.

Forensic engineering is the application of engineering principles to determine the causes of an accident, failure, or other performance problems. Generally, the purpose of a forensic engineering investigation is to locate causes of failure with a view to improve performance or life of a component, or to assist a court in determining the facts of an accident.

Civil Engineering may be considered to be the broadest of almost all engineering disciplines, covering the welfare and activities of huge masses of people all over the world. It is also the one industry which involves various disparate skills and trades, each having its own agenda and each vying for its rightful space and time. As a consequence, any mishap in civil engineering will generally affect a large number of people, and have far-reaching implications and long-lasting consequences.

Civil engineering often ends up with having the biggest failures in most countries, leading to huge loss of lives and injuries, and massive property damage. Forensic civil engineering is the logical investigation and legal presentation of various aspects of these accidents.

 This paper will highlight the common techniques available for forensic engineering, with particular reference to civil engineering. Traditional techniques of failure investigation such as fault-tree and event-tree analyses will not be discussed.