Visualization & Reconstruction Services

Our experts have reconstructed thousands of accidents involving vehicles of all types, motorcycles, commercial and industrial equipment, personal transportation equipment (bicycles, scooters, etc.), boats, planes, and trains.

By employing cutting-edge simulation and analytical techniques, our team gathers, analyzes, and interprets physical and digital evidence to deliver an accurate picture of how an accident happened. Our engineers and visualization staff work together to create visual products that represent and communicate the findings of our investigation and analysis in a clear, concise, and compelling manner.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Vehicle Accident on Highway
• Accident Reconstruction: Passenger Vehicles at Traffic Light
• Accident Reconstruction: Passenger Vehicles Rear-End Collision at Traffic Light
• Accident Reconstruction: Semi Truck & Motorcycle on the Highway (Front View)
• Accident Reconstruction: Semi Truck & Motorcycle on the Highway (Rear View)
• Accident Reconstruction: Semi Truck & Passenger Vehicles Collision (Multiple Perspectives)
• Accident Reconstruction: Semi Truck & Pickup Truck Collision on the Highway (Aerial Perspective)
• Accident Reconstruction: Semi Truck & Pickup Truck Collision on the Highway (Semi Driver's POV)
  
• Visualization: Illustration of Personal Injury in a Vehicle Accident

Defect

Our visualization experts develop graphics, models, and animations that depict the cause and effect of construction defect issues.

Delay

The complexity of interdependence within construction schedules can be made clear through interactive timelines. This form of media is ideally suited to show when an event occurred visually and the subsequent impacts on the project. Interactive timelines allow the presenter to walk through voluminous data and show documents in an organized manner with the ability to move from one section of the project to another instantly.

Click the link below to view an example:

• Visualization: Ditch Construction Analysis

In product liability cases, we provide detailed animations that communicate potential design issues, as well as the intended and resulting performance of a product, and how these design features and performance relate to the cause of an accident. This information helps simplify what happened, why, and how a design feature may relate to an accident in personal injury or property damage claims.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Accident Reconstruction: Vehicle Component Analysis
• Visualization: Construction Crane Brake Malfunction Evaluation
• Visualization: Depiction of Water Flow in a Treatment Facility
• Visualization: Product Analysis Comparing Accident Condition vs As-Designed Condition

Use of force cases, such as officer-involved shootings, compliance, riots, and police procedure events, can contain video, photographs, and testimony from multiple perspectives that paint a complex, confusing, and misleading account of an event. Our team is retained to analyze materials such as body-worn camera footage (BWC), cell phone footage, surveillance camera footage, and photographs from an incident.

Our engineers and visualization experts meticulously analyze video and photographs frame-by-frame, using techniques of video analysis and photogrammetry, to help understand the facts in the case and the details of what actually occurred. This analysis can then be represented in simple forms of animation, still graphics, or a virtual reality environment that allows a participant to have a real and precise experience of an event that has already occurred. Photogrammetric 3D analysis of 2D video and photographs also provides the viewer with the opportunity to witness the event from a different vantage. This experience allows a better understanding of what happened at the time of the event. These visual tools are physics-based and turn complex science into simple reality.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Visualization: Law Enforcement Use of Force
• Visualization: Shooting Incident Scenarios

Our team is retained to take the complicated details of a medical malpractice case and develop easily understood, physics-based visuals that communicate what happened, what should have happened, and if/where the negligence occurred. These medical issues are challenging to visualize or document with traditional media. 3D visualization is an ideal tool for clearly explaining medical procedures and issues. The 3D environment allows for unlimited access to what might otherwise be an occluded procedure or medical event.

Cases involving questions about nighttime visibility require an understanding of the lighting conditions at the accident scene and the effect that this lighting had on the driver’s visibility of other vehicles, pedestrians, or objects at the accident scene.

Our team is able to demonstrate visibility conditions at the time of the accident through the use of calibrated video, photographic equipment, and high-dynamic-range imaging methods, which help lay the groundwork for understanding what scene features were visible, and at what time during the accident sequence they became visible. Our visibility reenactment work has been accepted in court and shown to jurors throughout the United States since 2004.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Vehicle Accident Involving a Car Turning Onto the Highway (Witness POV)
• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Pedestrian Accident
• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Pedestrian Accident in the Rain (Driver POV)
• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Train & Semi Truck Accident at Industrial Facility
• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Vehicle Accident Involving Disabled Vehicle (Driver POV)
• Accident Reconstruction: Nighttime Vehicle Accident Involving a Semi Truck Turning Onto the Highway (Driver POV)
  

Our visualization experts, biomechanical engineers, and human factors scientists have collaborated with the National Football League (NFL), the National Hockey League (NHL), and in high school sports-related incidents to provide analysis of video, analysis of body motion, and impact forces. Our visualization and analysis services in these matters extend to personal injuries in vehicle accidents; product liability; work-related injuries; premises liability; and slips, trips, and falls. The technology and methodologies we have developed in this area have been peer-reviewed and published in the industry. They enable detailed analysis of body motion, injury-causing forces, and the clear and scientific visualization of these findings.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Accident Reconstruction: Skiiing Collision
• Visualization: 3D Perspective of Slip & Fall Incident
• Visualization: Illustration of Personal Injury in a Vehicle Accident
• Visualization: Occupational Injury Illustration
• Visualization: Premises Liability Case Involving Personal Injury
• Visualization: Reenactment of a Person Jumping Off a Highway Overpass
• Visualization: Sports Injury from Football
• Visualization: Sports Injury from Pole Vaulting

Photo and video analysis can be helpful in many disciplines and types of civil and criminal cases, including use of force, sports injuries, biomechanics, vehicle accident reconstruction, nighttime visibility, premises liability, fire origin, and shootings.

We offer a wide range of photo and video analysis services such as photogrammetry, photo mapping, photo projections, video clarification, video stabilization, video synchronizing, video tracking, and object tracking.

Our team is experienced in analyzing media from a variety of devices, including surveillance footage, cell phones, dash cameras, body-worn cameras, sports cameras, 360-degree or virtual reality cameras, and professional video cameras.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Accident Reconstruction: Car & Pedestrian Accident (Nighttime Reenactment - Wireframe to Video)
• Visualization: 3D Perspective of Slip & Fall Incident
• Visualization: Sideline Football Injury Reenactment

Photogrammetry is the science of making reliable measurements through the analysis of photographs or video. This technology helps determine factors such as position, shape, distance, and characteristics of people, vehicles, or other objects visible in a video. Photogrammetry can play a critical role in the analysis of an event, and the speed, acceleration, position, and orientation of objects, people, and vehicles in a video or photograph.

Our experts have been using camera-matching photogrammetry and photogrammetric techniques for decades, publishing over 50 peer-reviewed scientific publications, classes, and books on the topic. We continue to lead the research in this area nationally.

J.S. Held’s photogrammetry services include single-image photogrammetry, multi-view photogrammetry, reverse camera projection, photo scanning and mapping, camera-matching photogrammetry, and photographic projection.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Visualization: Depicting a Tree Falling on a Power Line Using Photogrammetry
• Visualization: Law Enforcement Use of Force
• Visualization: Officer-Involved Shooting Incident Reconstruction
• Visualization: Officer-Involved Shooting Incident Reconstruction

We develop graphics, models, and animations in matters involving the damage and/or collapse of property and infrastructure. These visuals are used to depict the cause, extent, and duration of damage to help clients understand and communicate what happened, why, for how long, and the overall extent of the impact.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Visualization: Power Plant Explosion
• Visualization: Property Damage to Football Practice Facility

J.S. Held’s visualization team leverages a number of methods and techniques to analyze and visualize the origin, cause, and propagation of fires and explosions, including wildfires.

We use photogrammetry, photo analysis, video analysis, and the application of augmented reality to establish where the fire/explosion originated, what caused the fire/explosion, and to define a timeline of the event. These findings are shown in sophisticated, dynamic, and scientifically-based graphics, animations, and physical models.

Click the links below to view examples:

• Visualization: Boiler Recovery Explosion
• Visualization: Power Plant Explosion
• Visualization: Wildfire Progression Over Time