By Thomas Zei
It is very likely that your life has been touched today by GPS. Since The Global Positioning System has become an important part of our cell phones, car navigation and finding the restaurant nearby, it is hard to imagine when it wasn’t there. But what does GPS and modern technology have to do with Stones River National Cemetery? Somehow the paths of the modern and history crossed recently.
My own interest in the cemetery only started in the past four years. The full story is for another chapter but for this tale, it is important to know that I prepared a full map of the cemetery. During the COVID-19 shutdown period at the battlefield, you could find me walking every row and column of the cemetery documenting the location of every grave. I also had gathered available information about every burial and recorded it all into a database. The subsequent analysis provided insight into the creation of the cemetery and where the soldiers died on the battlefield.
After I gave a talk focused on telling the story of the Battle of Stones River through the cemetery, I was approached by a gentleman from the audience. He asked whether I had considered doing something with “augmented reality” with the information. At which point, my brain drifted to a vision of nerds walking through the cemetery with virtual reality headsets playing some sort of video game with soldiers popping out of the graves. I must admit I didn’t really hear what else he said other than he had some people that could assist in developing the product. I remember telling him that I would be willing to help but anything would first require contacting the ranger with the request to approve. I half figured this would be the end of it since the park would never approve anything to do with VR headsets in the cemetery even if the gentleman made the request in the first place.
I was wrong. When I got to the park, Ranger John McKay handed me a scribbled note with a name and a phone number to call at the offices of Rutherford County. When I called, a meeting was set up at the office in charge of creating and maintaining the Geographic Information System (GIS) maps for the county in downtown Murfreesboro.
I was familiar with the county GIS maps. When I first moved to the area, I applied for a permit to install a fence. The employee reviewing the permit went to a large screen and pulled up an aerial photograph of my property. He added layers showing the different easements on the property and whether the fence would impede on the utilities. Since then, I regularly refer to the GIS maps on the Rutherford County site as the county develops.
As I waited to talk to the GIS manager Mike Curtis, I was watching his employee Brandon Wolak at a computer. On the screen, he had a high-resolution aerial photograph of the national cemetery and he was placing a red dot on each grave. He explained that each dot represented a data point at that specific GPS location. At that time, he had placed over 1500 red dots onto the photo. I was thinking it sounded like something I would have done. He was having a problem though seeing the location of all 7000 graves because of the large number of trees in the cemetery.
When we went in to speak with Mike, he stated that his office had started a project focused on the cemeteries in the county and documenting who was buried in each grave. For whatever reason, they decided to start with Stones River National Cemetery instead of a smaller graveyard. It turns out his boss’s boss was the gentleman at my talk and he figured I could be of some assistance to the project.
The first thing I addressed was the problem with placing the red dots on the photo. I already had a map of every grave so he could “see” under the trees in the photo. I then asked what they were planning on doing with each red dot. Brandon answered that he intended on going to the cemetery and walking the grounds to record the information on the headstones. But I already had all that information in my database and much more than what was recorded on the marker. He just needed to record the grave number on each red dot and download my database information to the GIS system to match the information.
After several meetings and approval by the park, the final product was published on their web site. Although we don’t have people walking around with VR headsets, the web site is a wonderful way to augment a visit to the national cemetery through your cell phone. Tapping on each grave, information pops up about the soldier. In Part Two, I will discuss how best to use the site. For now, the biggest tip is to zoom in until you see the grave numbers on the map. Click on each grave and see the magic that pops up. Many thanks to the GIS staff and Rutherford County for creating and hosting this asset
To access the GIS map: https://rcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=d0c06ffa7354447980511ba05ae94343
Or use this QR Code
It is very likely that your life has been touched today by GPS. Since The Global Positioning System has become an important part of our cell phones, car navigation and finding the restaurant nearby, it is hard to imagine when it wasn’t there. But what does GPS and modern technology have to do with Stones River National Cemetery? Somehow the paths of the modern and history crossed recently.
My own interest in the cemetery only started in the past four years. The full story is for another chapter but for this tale, it is important to know that I prepared a full map of the cemetery. During the COVID-19 shutdown period at the battlefield, you could find me walking every row and column of the cemetery documenting the location of every grave. I also had gathered available information about every burial and recorded it all into a database. The subsequent analysis provided insight into the creation of the cemetery and where the soldiers died on the battlefield.
After I gave a talk focused on telling the story of the Battle of Stones River through the cemetery, I was approached by a gentleman from the audience. He asked whether I had considered doing something with “augmented reality” with the information. At which point, my brain drifted to a vision of nerds walking through the cemetery with virtual reality headsets playing some sort of video game with soldiers popping out of the graves. I must admit I didn’t really hear what else he said other than he had some people that could assist in developing the product. I remember telling him that I would be willing to help but anything would first require contacting the ranger with the request to approve. I half figured this would be the end of it since the park would never approve anything to do with VR headsets in the cemetery even if the gentleman made the request in the first place.
I was wrong. When I got to the park, Ranger John McKay handed me a scribbled note with a name and a phone number to call at the offices of Rutherford County. When I called, a meeting was set up at the office in charge of creating and maintaining the Geographic Information System (GIS) maps for the county in downtown Murfreesboro.
I was familiar with the county GIS maps. When I first moved to the area, I applied for a permit to install a fence. The employee reviewing the permit went to a large screen and pulled up an aerial photograph of my property. He added layers showing the different easements on the property and whether the fence would impede on the utilities. Since then, I regularly refer to the GIS maps on the Rutherford County site as the county develops.
As I waited to talk to the GIS manager Mike Curtis, I was watching his employee Brandon Wolak at a computer. On the screen, he had a high-resolution aerial photograph of the national cemetery and he was placing a red dot on each grave. He explained that each dot represented a data point at that specific GPS location. At that time, he had placed over 1500 red dots onto the photo. I was thinking it sounded like something I would have done. He was having a problem though seeing the location of all 7000 graves because of the large number of trees in the cemetery.
When we went in to speak with Mike, he stated that his office had started a project focused on the cemeteries in the county and documenting who was buried in each grave. For whatever reason, they decided to start with Stones River National Cemetery instead of a smaller graveyard. It turns out his boss’s boss was the gentleman at my talk and he figured I could be of some assistance to the project.
The first thing I addressed was the problem with placing the red dots on the photo. I already had a map of every grave so he could “see” under the trees in the photo. I then asked what they were planning on doing with each red dot. Brandon answered that he intended on going to the cemetery and walking the grounds to record the information on the headstones. But I already had all that information in my database and much more than what was recorded on the marker. He just needed to record the grave number on each red dot and download my database information to the GIS system to match the information.
After several meetings and approval by the park, the final product was published on their web site. Although we don’t have people walking around with VR headsets, the web site is a wonderful way to augment a visit to the national cemetery through your cell phone. Tapping on each grave, information pops up about the soldier. In Part Two, I will discuss how best to use the site. For now, the biggest tip is to zoom in until you see the grave numbers on the map. Click on each grave and see the magic that pops up. Many thanks to the GIS staff and Rutherford County for creating and hosting this asset
To access the GIS map: https://rcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/webappviewer/index.html?id=d0c06ffa7354447980511ba05ae94343
Or use this QR Code
