Tread Forensics is a website dedicated to providing footwear and tire resources to the forensic community. The site went live in April 2017 and was created to perpetuate the online resources available at SWGTREAD.org.
The Scientific Working Group for Shoeprint and Tire Tread Evidence (SWGTREAD) was created in 2004 by the FBI Laboratory to standardize and advance the forensic analysis of footwear and tire impression evidence. The first meeting took place in September 2004 and the last in March 2013. From 2004 to 2013, the working group was co-funded by the FBI and the National Institute of Justice (NIJ). However, In October 2014, the Footwear and Tire Subcommittee of the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) Organization of Scientific Area Committees (OSAC) was created. At that point, SWGTREAD decided to discontinue its operations and focus its efforts on supporting the subcommittee; however, the OSAC subcommittee identified the latest versions of the SWGTREAD standards as the baseline documents that best reflect the current state of the practice of forensic footwear and tire analysis and thus re-published them on the subcommittee's website.
Paper: S.P. Lund and H. Iyer, Likelihood Ratio as Weight of Forensic Evidence: A Closer Look. Journal of Research of National Institute of Standards and Technology, Published online 12 October 2017. DOI: 10.6028/jres.122.027
Richetelli, N., Lee, M. C., Lasky, C. A., Gump, M. E., & Speir, J. A. (2017). Classification of footwear outsole patterns using Fourier transform and local interest points. Forensic Science International, 275, 102-109.
Snyder, C. (2016). A Comparison of Photography and Casting Methods of Footwear Impressions in Different Sandy Soil Substrates. Journal of Forensic Identification, 66(1), 37-58.
Loll, A. (2016). Understanding Digital Enhancement Processes. Journal of Forensic Identification, 66(1), 3-12.
Burrow, J. G. (2016). Is Diurnal Variation a Factor in Bare Footprint Formation? Journal of Forensic Identification, 66(2), 107-117.