Bonaparte Platform
Definition
Kinship-matching software developed by SMART Research (a subsidiary of SNN at Radboud University Nijmegen), commissioned by and built in close collaboration with the Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI), used in the MH17 DVI operation to cross-reference DNA profiles from recovered remains against family reference samples across 15 nationalities.
- Developer
- SMART Research, Radboud University Nijmegen
- Commissioned with
- Netherlands Forensic Institute (NFI)
- Key deployment
- MH17 disaster victim identification
- Scale in MH17 case
- Cross-referenced profiles across about 10 nationalities
Common questions
How does Bonaparte fit into the wider MH17 identification workflow?+
DNA laboratories generated profiles from recovered remains and from reference samples supplied by families of the passengers and crew. Bonaparte then performed the statistical kinship comparisons at scale, producing ranked likelihood matches that forensic experts reviewed and confirmed alongside other identification methods such as dental and fingerprint records.
Why was a dedicated platform needed rather than manual kinship analysis?+
The MH17 case involved 298 victims from 15 nationalities and a correspondingly large set of family reference samples, a scale at which manual pairwise kinship calculation would be slow and error-prone. Automated software let the identification board process combinations systematically and consistently across the whole case.
Related terms
- INTERPOL DVI Pink Form
- The post-mortem recording form used in INTERPOL DVI operations to document all biometric identification data from human remains, including pathologist's cause-of-death findings,...
- Manner of Death
- The circumstantial classification of a death using the NAME five-category scheme (natural, accident, suicide, homicide, undetermined), or the jurisdiction-specific equivalent, recorded separately...
- MCCD Form 4
- India's Medical Certification of Cause of Death, the standardised certificate submitted to the District Registrar under the Registration of Births and Deaths...
- Model State Vital Statistics Act 2011
- The US federal model legislation that standardises the death certificate format (including the manner-of-death field) and the registration chain from Medical Examiner...
- Phase 4 Reconciliation
- The INTERPOL DVI phase in which post-mortem Pink Form data is matched against ante-mortem Yellow Form data across all four primary identification...
- RBD Act 1969
- India's Registration of Births and Deaths Act 1969 (most recently amended 2023), which mandates civil registration of every death and routes MCCD...
- Underlying Cause of Death
- The disease or injury that initiated the chain of events that led to death, as defined in the WHO ICD coding conventions....