Vietnam War Significant Activities “SIGACTs”

The Vietnam War SIGACTs-type data include ~259,516 georeferenced, wartime unique incidents tracked by U.S. forces covering the period May 20, 1966 through March 12, 1973. The data include incident-level details related to the numbers of individuals killed, wounded, captured or missing; type of military operation; nationality of armed forces (and identity of other actors); military objectives; and matériel losses and damage. We have supplemented the data to include latitude-longitude coordinates for each incident.

The data were derived from the ‘Records About the Ground Combat Operations by the Army During the Vietnam War — Situation Report Army (SITRA)’ from Record Group 218, compiled by the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff. These records were accessed electronically from the NARA online records and processed by PVL members for use in empirical research. (Please contact Dr. Shaver for access to the processed data.)

CITATIONS:

1) Shaver, A., Komal Sikka, K., Keltner, K., Azimioara, N., Manly, J., Marin, R., Milinic, S., Green, B., Shah, D., Barbour-Berson, S., Creach, C., Baradwaj, A., Fan, S., Cabezas, K., Sanders, H., & Goldstein, L. "Global Patterns of Political Violence and Social Unrest." Working Paper, 2023.

2) Electronic records relating to the Vietnam War. National Archives and Records Administration. (n.d.). https://www.archives.gov/research/military/vietnam-war/electronic-data-files