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Introduction
On December 26, 2004, a 9.3 magnitude earthquake erupted in the Indian Ocean off the coast of Banda Aceh in Sumatra, triggering a massive tsunami that affected 13 countries and killed over 280,000 people (INTERPOL Tsunami Evaluation Working Group, 2014; Lay et al., 2005). Thailand reported 8,195 people as either dead or missing. The effect of the disaster on local Thai families was immense, with entire villages swept away. In total, 40 other nations also suffered casualties in Thailand, including approximately 2,400 foreign tourists in Patong, Khao Lak, Krabi and Phi Phi Island (INTERPOL Tsunami Evaluation Working Group, 2014; De Valck, 2006). Approximately, 450 of the foreign victims were children, aged 16 years or younger (Figure 1). Losses often involved entire families, resulting in large numbers of related decedents. For example, the pedigree in Figure 2 illustrates a common scenario with victims across three generations, while the pedigree in Figure 3 represents an extreme example.
Disasters are often characterized by the composition of the victim population. In a disaster with a “closed population,” for example, an aviation disaster with a passenger manifest, basic information about the number and identify of the victims is available from the outset. Conversely, in a disaster with an “open population” neither the number of victims nor their identities are immediately known. The 2004 tsunami had an “open population,” therefore the Thai Tsunami Victim Identification (TTVI) did not know the victim numbers or their demographics until well into the operation.
Such a large number of related victims and a disproportionate number of deceased children had not previously been encountered on this scale in a disaster victim identification (DVI) operation. By comparison, the median age of the 2,749 World Trade Center (WTC) victims was 39 and 38 years for males and females, respectively. Moreover, only three WTC victims were aged five and under, and related victims were not common (United States Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, 2002). All but two of the 202 victims of the 2002 Bali Bombings were adults, mainly in their 20s and 30s, and most were unrelated. The two child victims were females aged 14 and 15[1]. The 2001 crash of American Airlines flight 587 resulted in numerous child fatalities, where 28 of the 251...