New mapping and data technologies rewrite history and reframe the present.
Working with GIS Specialist Janine Glathar and her team of GIS student assistants, Professor Del Testa developed a historical GIS to tackle the Nghe-Tinh Soviets question. For two years they toiled, digitizing old maps, structuring and inputting numeric data — on everything from rice harvests to religiosity, village by village — and learning their way around the software. Finally they arrived at that culminating moment in Glathar’s office, which, says Del Testa, is when all the hard work paid off.