Map the Fallen, a Google Earth map released yesterday for Memorial Day, is an impressive piece of work. It maps the approximate locations of the deaths of coalition soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, and links each one to that soldier’s hometown. It uses data from icasualties.org to populate the map.
Unfortunately, either some of the data on icasualties.org isn’t formatted properly or there’s something wrong with Sean Askay’s data scraper. Many of the Canadian casualties are missing from the Afghanistan map. Because female soldiers are given a different colour, the absence of Capt. Nichola Goddard, Canada’s first female combat soldier killed on the front lines, is especially conspicuous.
Cpt. Nichola Goddard's entry in Map the Fallen
In fact, her entry in Map the Fallen contains several errors. Her last name is given as “MSM,” which is actually a title indicating that Goddard was posthumously given the Meritorious Service Medal. Her hometown is given as “Calgary, Nova Scotia,” she is reported to have died in “Not reported yet, Afghanistan,” and the circumstances of her death aren’t given.
I’ve been working on a database of Canadian soldiers for years now. Here’s Capt. Goddard’s entry in the CBCNews.ca database, and here’s the approximate location of her death. That map of Canadian casualties in Afghanistan was my baby for a while, but it hasn’t been updated for nearly a year, for various technical and editorial reasons.
I’m planning an update to the database this summer that will include some map data.
#1 by Sean Askay - May 26th, 2009 at 19:34
Hi John,
Thanks for the heads-up. Nichola’s problem is a combination of incomplete date from icasualties.org, and a problem with my scraper. Often, when detailed are not available at the time of the initial incident report, I don’t think that the data is frequently updated later. Hence the “Not reported yet” location, and the missing summary.
Also, when parsing all the names from icasualties, I have to parse each name to separate it into first, middle, last, etc. I don’t yet have filters for less common military ranks/honors (like MSM), which is why that slipped in. And when I can’t properly parse a soldier’s name, I can’t pull in their information for other resources (like afghanistan.pigstye.net for non-US photos and guestbooks).
For better or worse, icasualties is the only single source of non-US casualties… writing scrapers for the best resource from each country wasn’t really realistic.
Ultimately, the solution here to for me to finish the corrections submission form, where people can quickly submit the proper information. Then, I can make that the information available to the other memorials sites, to help with corrections.
The main trick there is that all this information should be verified with the submitters/families (unless other documentation exists on the web). This certainly means that I will need volunteers willing to make phone calls to verify information and the identities of the submitters.
Once the correction form is live, I would love it if you’d be willing to make corrections for some of your fallen Canadian soldiers.
Thanks!
Sean Askay