PhD Candidate Vienna Lam completes successful thesis defence

Congratulations to Vienna Lam on the successful defence of her PhD thesis, “Aquatic Forensic Taphonomy, Water-Related Fatalities, and Medicolegal Death Investigations”, a detailed work that helps to better understand risk of injury, water-related fatalities, and decomposition presentation in aqueous contexts.

Abstract

This thesis takes a multidisciplinary approach to better understanding water-related deaths through five complimentary empirical studies that address water-related fatality risk factors, postmortem taphonomic processes in built and natural environments, and institutional resilience, particularly in the face of a global pandemic. Studies include aquatic risk factors, paediatric water fatalities, impact of COVID-19 on medicolegal investigations, aquatic decomposition in built environments and naturally occurring water bodies.

The first two studies involved collating and creating a national codex system for all unintentional water-related fatalities in Canada. Results demonstrated that integration with geospatial data (census boundaries, hydrological shape files, and spectrum management data regarding cellular towers) can effectively stratify risks and model EMS access. The next study on supervision and guardianship factors in paediatric deaths showed that youth are inadequate interveners, and environmental conditions change the risk profile by age group. Infants and children are particularly vulnerable, even in domestic settings. Next, pandemic preparedness and strategies deployed by medicolegal professionals (Canada, US, Italy, UK) resulted in key strategic recommendations for operations, secondary services, and leveraging auxiliary/academic agencies and institutions.

The following studies involved a multi-year medicolegal review of aquatic deaths. The study on bodies recovered from built environments demonstrated how the presentation of taphonomy varied between body portions immersed versus above water. Some situational and anatomic moderators have a strong influence on the relationship between postmortem submergence intervals (PMSI) and the presence of decomposition across three regions of the body (head, torso, and limbs). The fifth study on natural environments tested existing taphonomic scoring methods for accuracy and agreeableness. Results show that some aquatic decomposition are stronger predictors of PMSI when analyzed with multiple factors simultaneously.

Overall, these five studies represent a detailed medicolegal approach to better understanding risk of injury, water-related fatalities, and decomposition presentation in aqueous contexts. By creating new databases with a uniformed schema into which multiple datasets with conflicting codices can be consolidated, this dissertation serves the dual function of supporting future researchers with a roadmap to produce their own integrated databases, as well as practitioners by recommending improvements for data stewardship, record management, and standards development.

Congratulations again Vienna, on this well-deserved achievement!