Memorial Day in the U.S. is a time remember those who have fought for the highest ideals of liberty, and who have lost their lives in doing so. In this Internet age, a new application in a way that the mainstream news media is unable to offer. “Map the Fallen” allows us to honor soldiers from Operation Enduring Freedom and Operation Iraqi Freedom in way that Jolie O’Dell of Read Write Web describes as “perhaps the most comprehensive and deeply detailed picture of the human cost to date.”
Combining information gathered from several sources, it puts a human face to each loss, as well as names and ages, their hometowns and information about their deaths including the location and cause. It offers a timeline feature and an interactive digital map as well, using data from sites including:
• Google Earth 5.0
• Department of Defense’s Statistical Information Analysis Division
• icasualties.org
• MilitaryTimes.com’s Honor the Fallen
• the Washington Post’s Faces of the Fallen
• Legacy.com
• GeoNames.org
Users can also follow links to sign guestbooks, or read obituaries or other press coverage, or even get info from the Department of Defense, and internet connectivity makes it all possible.
It was developed as a personal project by a guy who now develops geospatial content for the Google Earth Outreach team. He has since become something of a specialist in the humanity of technology, training indigenous communities in Brazil, helping Google’s disaster response mapping efforts for the San Diego fires and Cyclone Nargis, and working with NASA to get a copy of Google Earth on the International Space Station. Work such as this can only help to bring the world together, and hopefully, with internet speed.