Collaborative Forensic Platform for Electronic Artefacts in the Internet of Vehicles

The proliferation of automotive technology, communications protocols, and embedded systems has led to the creation of the Internet of Vehicles, where each node represents an intelligent vehicle functioning as a robust sensing platform, collecting data from the surroundings and neighbouring vehicles. Subsequently, this sensed data is made available to drivers and infrastructure engineers to assist in ensuring safe navigation, controlling pollution, and managing traffic. The electronic data possessed by intelligent vehicles can aid in establishing the details of road crimes. Typically, these vehicles are regarded as repositories of artefacts. In this context, intelligent vehicles possess the capability to actively obtain, retain, and send digital evidence to an authorized organization via the Internet reliably and securely, despite geographic and time constraints. This paper presents research efforts to create a fundamental framework known as the Collaborative Forensic Platform for Electronic Artefacts (CFPEA), which empowers individuals or collectives to manage the artefacts sensed by their intelligent vehicles. The CFPEA system collects artefacts acquired by intelligent vehicles in a non-proprietary format. This allows crime investigators and law enforcement officials to easily access and utilize these artefacts for forensic purposes, increasing owners’ monetization from each use of their sensed artefacts. CFPEA enables the identification of suitable roadside units and the evaluation of their provided datasets, which can assist in autonomously extracting relevant evidence for any ongoing investigations. Utilizing CFPEA to collect any potential artefacts in various road crimes can offer several advantages in solving road crimes or investigating incidents as well.