Version 1 / Date of Issue: 10.29.15 / Issuing Authority: Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB)

OSAC Research Needs Assessment Form

Title of research need:

Keywords:

Submitting subcommittee(s): Date Approved:

(If SAC review identifies additional 

subcommittees, add them to the box above.)

Background information:

1. Description of research need:

2. Key bibliographic references relating to this research need:

3a. In what ways would the research results improve current laboratory capabilities?

Automatic speaker recognition (ASR) technology is developed and evaluated on available data to 

improve and measure performance. As ASR matures, researchers have realized that the data 

available for development is not representative of the data received by forensic and investigative 

examiners. We therefore propose the collection of realistic datasets. This realistic data is the key 

enabler for all the work of OSAC-Speaker and is the top priority!

[1] Cieri, C., Andrews, W., Campbell, J., et al., The Mixer and Transcript Reading Corpora: Resources 

for Multilingual, Crosschannel Speaker Recognition Research, International Conference on 

Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), ELRA, Genoa, Italy, pp. 117-120, 22-28, May 2006.

[2] Campbell, J. P., Reynolds, D. A., Corpora for the Evaluation of Speaker Recognition Systems. In 

Proc. International Conference on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing in Phoenix, Arizona, 

IEEE pp 829–832 15–19 May 1999 

Evaluating the existing ASR methods using data more representative of what the labs receive for 

analysis will (1) help labs better understand the capabilities and limitations of the ASR tools they 

use and (2) help identify capability gaps that research can be focused on. The requirement for 

multiple datasets arises out of the wide variation in the types of data received by the various users 

of ASR in the United States.

DATASETS: For community research activities*

forensic speaker recognition data collection

Speaker Recognition 2/1/16
Version 1 / Date of Issue: 10.29.15 / Issuing Authority: Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB)

3b. In what ways would the research results improve understanding of the scientific basis for the 

subcommittee(s)?

3c. In what ways would the research results improve services to the criminal justice system?

4. Status assessment (I, II, III, or IV): 

This research need has been identified by one or more subcommittees of OSAC and is being provided as an 

informational resource to the community.

The RDT&E Task Group understands that there is a critical need to compile a set of corpora that supports 

the evaluation of systems on data that closely resembles the conditions seen by forensic speech 

examiners. Therefore:

* We endorse the initiative proposed by Reva Schwartz (NIST, 301-975-2175) to fund a data collection 

that produces data that is realistic and is able to support research and evaluation of automatic systems 

for the foreseeable future. The need for realistic data is likely the main enabler for follow-on activities 

critical to this OSAC committee. These activities include validation of methods, evaluation of current and 

new methods across the spectrum and research into new forms of conducting the identification.

Major gap 

in current 

knowledge

Minor gap 

in current 

knowledge

No or limited

current research 

is being 

conducted

I III

Existing current 

research is being 

conducted

II IV

The more realistic testing of the existing tools will lead to additional detailed studies of the 

phenomena causing the existing ASR methods to produce erroneous results. The results of those 

studies can be expected to improve not only our understanding of ASR, but also of other areas of 

speech processing and forensics.

A better understanding of our current ASR capabilities will help ensure that investigators, judges 

and juries are getting the best possible information when ASR is involved. The expected 

improvement of those capabilities by developments based on those research results will also allow 

the more effective use of ASR by the justice system and other USG users.

 I
Version 1 / Date of Issue: 10.29.15 / Issuing Authority: Forensic Science Standards Board (FSSB)

// Approval date:

(Approval is by majority vote of subcommittee. Once approved, forward to SAC.)

1. Does the SAC agree with the research need? Yes ⃝ No ⃝ 

2. Does the SAC agree with the status assessment? Yes ⃝ No ⃝

If no, what is the status assessment of the SAC:

Approval date:

(Approval is by majority vote of SAC. Once approved, forward to NIST for posting.)

2/1/16 Subcommittee

SAC

6/15/16