Episode 17: The Dayton Peace Accords legacy feat. NGA's historian & Defense Mapping Agency mapmaker

Summary: This episode of Geointeresting celebrates the work done by the Defense Mapping Agency, an NGA legacy organization, during the Dayton Peace Accords. On Nov. 1, 1995, President Bill Clinton invited representatives to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base in Dayton, Ohio, to negotiate an end to the ethnic discord in the former Yugoslav Republic between Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia and Serbia. After 18 weeks of shuttle diplomacy and 21 days of intense negotiations, leaders from the contending parties initialed the Dayton Peace accords agreeing to the end of the war on Nov. 21. The ceremonial signing took place in Paris one month later with Clinton in attendance. A team of 50 DMA technicians brought portable computer systems, digitizing stations and printers to Ohio, allowing them to quickly produce disputed territory maps and to make complex revisions, sometimes within a matter of 30 minutes. Geointeresting talked with the current NGA historian and a former DMA mapmaker about the legacy of the Dayton Peace Accords. For even more information: http://go.usa.gov/x86hR