New Guinea ArcGIS Mapping

From June 2017-July 2018, in my role as a Research Associate supporting the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA), which seeks to recover and identify the remains of Missing in Action soldiers, I helped provide new information on American casualties in Papua New Guinea.  In particular, I was tasked with analyzing the Battle of Buna, a complex campaign involving thousands of U.S. and Australian soldiers.  In a first-of-its-kind project, I cross-referenced dozens of sources to create an interactive map with ArcGIS software that displayed the movements of American units down to the Company level during every day of the conflict.  The map allows DPAA historians to quickly determine where soldiers were likely positioned when they went Missing in Action.