Title When War Comes Home: A Humanistic Archive for Veterans, Families, and the Long-Term Consequences of War
Author(s) Laboratory of Information Systems
Affiliation
New Euro Vision: exhibitions, marketing, research s.r.o.
Country Czech Republic 
Contribution type conceptual paper; methodological paper
Thematic area • Theory, Methodology, and Evidence
Conference framework connection • Analytical Track AT-01 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-02 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-03 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-04 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-05 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-06 — provisional title to be defined• Analytical Track AT-07 — provisional title to be defined
Abstract War-related environmental contamination leaves two parallel records: scientific evidence and lived experience. The latter is often dispersed across veterans, civilians, families, caregivers, photographs, medical files, correspondence, and memory, and may disappear before it can inform research. This conceptual paper proposes the PD Human Experience Archive: an independent, multilingual digital repository for personal and family materials concerning war, toxic exposure, delayed illness, caregiving, loss, and changing interpretation over time. Contributors would retain control over language, content, and access, while the system would provide permanent identifiers, provenance, version history, protected originals, structured metadata, and citable links. Accepted records would not be silently overwritten or deleted; corrections and later reflections would be preserved as additional versions. Artificial intelligence could support transcription, optical character recognition, translation, indexing, semantic search, and identification of possible connections, but every derived output would remain labeled and separate from the original testimony. Annual ISBN-bearing guides would map the continuously growing archive without replacing it. Beginning with a United States–Vietnam pilot, the project would preserve differing and sometimes incompatible perspectives under one humanistic and technical standard. Its purpose is not to treat testimony as causal proof, but to prevent irreplaceable human evidence from disappearing and to make permitted materials available for responsible scientific, historical, medical, and environmental analysis.
Key points • People may preserve materials in their own language, form, and viewpoint, with granular control over access and later use.
• Permanent identifiers, protected originals, provenance, and version history create a stable and citable record without freezing later interpretation.
• AI supports access and discovery but does not rewrite testimony, determine historical truth, or establish medical causation.
Keywords war; veterans; family archives; environmental exposure; oral history; AI-assisted archives; research ethics
Main discussion question What minimum humanistic, technical, and legal standards can keep personal war- and exposure-related records permanent, citable, multilingual, and research-accessible without depriving contributors of control?
OJS publication link https://pollution-diseases-ojs.org/index.php/pd/article/view/68
Note. Analytical TracksIn addition to the main thematic areas, the conference programme will include several cross-cutting analytical tracks. These tracks will be defined during the preparation of the programme, based on the submitted abstracts and the emerging links between presentations.At the preliminary stage, abstracts may be assigned to provisional analytical tracks marked as AT-01 to AT-07. Final track titles will be announced after the Scientific Committee has reviewed the submitted materials.