Multi-laboratory evaluation of forensic voice comparison systems under conditions reflecting those of a real forensic case (forensic_eval_01) – Introduction

There is increasing pressure on forensic laboratories to validate the performance of forensic analysis systems before they are used to assess strength of evidence for presentation in court. Different forensic voice comparison systems may use different approaches, and even among systems using the same general approach there can be substantial differences in operational details. From case to case, the relevant population, speaking styles, and recording conditions can be highly variable, but it is common to have relatively poor recording conditions and mismatches in speaking style and recording conditions between the known- and questioned-speaker recordings. In order to validate a system intended for use in casework, a forensic laboratory needs to evaluate the degree of validity and reliability of the system under forensically realistic conditions. The present paper is an introduction to a Virtual Special Issue consisting of papers reporting on the results of testing forensic voice comparison systems under conditions reflecting those of an actual forensic voice comparison case. A set of training and test data representative of the relevant population and reflecting the conditions of this particular case has been released, and operational and research laboratories are invited to use these data to train and test their systems. The present paper includes the rules for the evaluation and a description of the evaluation metrics and graphics to be used. The name of the evaluation is: forensic_eval_01.