Today's information technology offers the UFO Field Investigator many new resources that weren't previously available to investigators of the past. The advent of the Internet and its associated technology has provided the investigator with readily available tools such as UFO sighting databases, UFO statistical reports, online current and historical weather data, orbital satellite and planetary tracking resources and much more. These tools can often add many supporting details allowing the investigator to make a more informative evaluation of the UFO sighting report and its contents.
The focus here is a new interactive tool that was recently made available online or for installation on your home pc. You may have seen this mentioned in the February 2003 issue of the MUFON Journal. This tool is a JavaScript utility used to calculate the Ballester-Guasp Certainty Index for a UFO sighting report. You can find it on the Internet at http://mufondfw.org/ut/eval/eval_calc.html courtesy of Field Investigator and program author Terry Groff (email terry@mufondfw.org). A complete guideline is also included on the website explaining all of the details involved with the Ballester-Guasp numerical evaluation, and its associated calculations. This information can also be found in the MUFON Field Investigators Manual.
This numerical evaluation, developed by Vicente-Juan Ballester Olmos and Miguel Guasp, allows the Field Investigator to determine important parameters of an anomalous report. These parameters are: 1) volume and quality of data, 2) the abnormality or strangeness of the event, 3) the credibility of the report, and 4) an overall score derived from the previous 3 parameters. This allows a clear-cut identification of the aspects of good sighting investigations that can lead to valuable reports.
This JavaScript program allows the Field Investigator to actively enter the required information discovered during the interview/investigation process, such as the type of interview conducted, the length of the interview, the type of encounter, and several witness characteristics, to name a few, into the program. These values are entered via a multiple-choice drop down menu format, which allows ease of use and automatic numerical calculation as the different selections are entered, saving the investigator the trouble of having to deal with complicated mathematical calculations. After all the appropriate information is entered in the required fields a Certainty Index' is automatically calculated, appearing in a numerical percentage format. As this Certainty Index (0-100%) increases so does the chance that what you're dealing with is a true UFO related event.
The value of this Certainty Index not only gives structure and ranking capability to a large database of UFO events, such as MUFON's WUFOD database, but also more importantly it can reveal to an investigator those things that can improve an investigation's overall quality. By studying the different index's used to calculate this Certainty Index' and becoming familiar with the Ballester-Guasp evaluation you can quickly determine what information is important to gather during an interview and on-site inspection. Familiarity with this index will also help you ensure that you have all the information you need before concluding the investigation, resulting in a thorough and complete final report. This is a valuable and free tool that all investigators should take the time to become familiar with.
If you have any questions or comments concerning the Ballester-Guasp Evaluation or you have ideas for future articles please feel free to contact me.
Todd Lemire
Chief Investigator
Michigan MUFON
