Methodology & Data

MODULE SYLLABUS

📖7 min read

Introduction

Whether you work in law enforcement, in journalism, or as a private investigator, you play by different systems, contexts, and rules. BVI cannot capture every jurisdictional requirement. The gate is a baseline for what is common to all of them. The gate is the floor: passing it means the research is defensible (a sound method) in your field and under any court's admissibility rules. Your professional context adds its own requirements on top of the gate. It tells you where your work stands before you apply them. If your context enforces looser rules, follow the gate anyway: the extra precision costs little and is available when the project demands it. The professional baseline this gate tracks is the Berkeley Protocol on Digital Open Source Investigations^[1].

As of writing this module, GPT's latest model, Astra^[2], can create full 3D models from reference images. The question is accuracy: are the models accurate, and how accurate? An investigation holds value only if it holds up to the real world. Does the scale match? Do the dimensions match? The working assumption is that a generated scene does not match reality, which is why we verify the human-built ones. That assumption is no longer safe. Even when a model produces something that does match, someone still has to verify it. This module makes that verification smooth: one ordered path from source to report, whether a human or a model placed the geometry.

Module Overview


Est. time	—
Type	Methodology — the research lifecycle
Prerequisites	None. This is the starting point.
Start here	Module Contents — the walkthrough order for this module

Learning Outcomes

By the end of this module you will be able to:

Define a research question and approach before gathering data
Collect and document sources with full provenance
Preserve and store evidence so originals survive tampering and loss
Verify that material is what it claims to be, with a verdict on record
Analyze with a declared method and honest measurement
Process data while documenting every change
Validate and report with a verdict a reviewer can check
Collaborate with one shared board, one linked scene, and a clean handover

Module Contents

The Research Gate is an overview of the pages in this module, and a checklist you can measure your project against as you work. The rules change with the context you work in: a journalist, a law-enforcement officer, and a private investigator each play by a different system. The gate is the guideline they all share, and it keeps the result defensible. Each item links to the deeper Data page that explains the why and how. Work through the stages in order. Do not proceed to the next stage until the current one passes. Strictness is proportional: a forensic reconstruction requires the full gate, where a historical exploration may document N/A with reason. Passing the gate claims that the method was sound and defensible. It does not claim that the findings are true.

This module follows the data lifecycle: each stage builds on the last. Each step opens with a short introduction and closes with its pass/fail checklist.

Knowledge Check

Test your understanding of the module before moving on. Ten questions with immediate feedback; the question order and options reshuffle on every attempt.