A method for discriminating between explosive events having their origins in High Explosive or Chemical/Biological detonation employing multiresolution analysis provided by a discrete wavelet transform. Original signatures of explosive events are broken down into subband components thereby removing higher frequency noise features and creating two sets of coefficients at varying levels of decomposition. These coefficients are obtained each time the signal is passed through a lowpass and highpass filter bank whose impulse response is derived from Daubechies db5 wavelet. Distinct features are obtained through the process of isolating the details of the high oscillatory components of the signature. The ratio of energy contained within the details at varying levels of decomposition is sufficient to discriminate between explosive events such as High Explosive and Chemical/Biological.