Research in statistical analysis of fire debris evidence has grown increasingly as a result of the 2009 National Academy of Sciences report. Multivariate statistical procedures such as principal components analysis (PCA) have previously been investigated as a means for associating simulated fire debris samples to the corresponding ignitable liquid standards. This research investigated the development of class reference standards aimed to standardize a multivariate statistical approach for the analysis of fire debris. Three standards representative of ASTM chemical classes were developed in this research to investigate the utility of an alternative standard data set. Standards were developed based on major characteristic compounds of each class. Commercially available ignitable liquid standards, developed class reference standards, and simulated fire debris samples were analyzed by gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. The utility of developed reference standards was investigated using PCA, hierarchical cluster analysis (HCA), and k-Nearest neighbors (k-NN) as a means of generating a more standardized approach. Commercially available standards were also used to investigate the impact of data set selection for successful association and classification of simulated fire debris samples to the corresponding standard and address current limitations of commercial ignitable liquid standards. Association and classification of class reference standards was successful and showed some potential as an alternative to commercially available ignitable liquid standards.
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