GEDmatch: A Platform for Data Driven Forensic Intelligence

Genealogists, historians, and adoptees have traditionally used genealogy to find birth families and build family trees. Forensic Genetic Genealogy, or Investigative Genetic Genealogy uses genealogical databases and family trees to develop intelligence in cold cases, cases of missing persons, unsolved violent crimes and exonerating the wrongly convicted with equal levels of assuredness. GEDmatch connects the largest repository of voluntarily submitted DNA data for forensic use with an interactive kinship analysis environment that balances the needs of both the genetic genealogy and forensics communities.

In this talk, we will share an update on GEDmatch, including database growth metrics, the opt-in rates for forensic use, how the security of the platform is being strengthened, and terms of service. We will present the underlying statistics associated with some commonly used tools for investigative intelligence, and the impact of using different data sources on long rage kinship outcomes. We will showcase examples of how law enforcement professionals interact with GEDmatch as an impartial, science-driven tool, to accelerate the generation of genealogically significant leads for forensic use. Finally, we will give the forensic and genealogy community a preview of the GEDmatch roadmap and how we are evolving its tool base.