2. Relevant criteria in conceiving and operating a forensic intelligence system Forensic intelligence ultimately serves different objectives in a wide variety of operating contexts where decisions are often of a different nature than evidence-based court decisions [5].
Systems implementing the forensic intelligence process must be pragmatic enough to sustain uncertain reasoning while remaining scientifi-cally rigorous and controllable.
To cope with these constraints and manage risks of reasoning and acting under potentially false hypotheses, it is argued that a balance must be struck between four general parameters: credibility, integrity, timeliness and flexibility [6–9].
The performance of any forensic intelligence system as well as its building blocks can be assessed using these four parameters regardless of the nature of the trace considered.
The notions are defined hereafter: