What 3D shipwreck scans can prove

How far can detailed sonar and lidar scans help investigators determine why a ship was lost and assign blame?

Scans can reveal external damage direction and whether a hull was pushed inward or blown outward, but they remain one part of a larger causal investigation.

A detailed sonar or lidar survey can show what happened to the outside of a hull. Deformation can indicate whether an explosion acted from outside or blew structure outward from within. That physical evidence helps reconstruct the loss, but it does not by itself establish the cause or assign responsibility. One comparison is crime-scene photography, with another panelist suggesting that overhead imagery is a better analogy for its limited view. Further investigation is still needed to connect the visible damage to the accident.