Application and evaluation of machine-learning model for fire accelerant classification from GC-MS data of fire residue

Detection of fire accelerants from fire residues is critical to determine whether the case was arson or accidental fire. However, to develop a standardized model for determining the presence or absence of fire accelerants was not easy because of high temperature which cause disappearance or combustion of components of fire accelerants. In this study, logistic regression, random forest, and support vector machine models were trained and evaluated from a total of 728 GC-MS analysis data obtained from actual fire residues. Mean classification accuracies of the three models were 63 %, 81 %, and 84 %, respectively, and in particular, mean AU-PR values of the three models were evaluated as 0.68, 0.86, and 0.86, respectively, showing fine performances of random forest and support vector machine models.