ExplosivesTool helps investigators connect bomb fragments to bomb makers

Authorities with the U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM), the Canadian military, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), and law enforcement agencies in the United Kingdom have adopted a crowdsourcing system called DFuze to help agencies in twenty-five countries connect bomb fragments to bomb makers or individuals who could be connected to a specific bomb. According to the ATF, DFuze “establishes an information highway that facilitates and promotes the sharing of information between ATF, participating members, and National Bomb Data Centers worldwide. DFuze also serves as a reference library for research and training.”

DFuze, developed in the United Kingdom and first used as Scotland Yard’s bomb database, is now owned by Intelligent Software Solutions (ISS). The Colorado-based company has developed DFuze into multiple platforms, including a Web interface, a mobile app, and an open-source database called ReportDesk. The technology allows users to share bomb images and data to assist pending investigations. “It’s mainly aimed at fast time dissemination of information from bomb scenes or from terrorist incidents,” Neil Fretwell an operations director at ISS and one of the creators of DFuze told Defense One.  

Fretwell, a former lead investigator for the U.K. Police National Bomb Data Center, describes his experience while working the scene of the 2005 London subway bombings and how that led to developing DFuze into a crowdsourcing application. “I was down in one of the tunnels…the information was needed urgently back in the control center and at the other scenes. We were taking images, downloading them onto a compact disk…sticking them on the back of a motorbike with a blue light and physically running them back to Scotland Yard. It was nonsense,” he said. Fretwell and his colleagues then decided that the DFuze system needed an upgrade.

Today, DFuze has inspired the creation of iTrace, a global weapons tracking system used by the European Union and Conflict Armament Research (CAR), a group founded by former United Nations weapons monitors. Using information provided by CAR field work, iTrace tracks the movement and groups associated with weapons and ammunition used by militias in Africa. “We learned that solely focusing on one country when looking at weapons doesn’t uncover the full picture,” CAR’s director of operations, Jonah Leff, told the Washington Post. “The U.N., governments and NGOs I think really started addressing this issue in the late 90s, but very little is understood about the minutia and trade of illicit weapons globally.” iTrace is currently available to diplomats at the U.N. and will be available to the public in September. “We document one weapon at a time, one crate of ammunition at a time, and build a case around it,” Leff said.