Victim identification from the September 11, 2001 attack on the World Trade Center: Past trends and future projections.

Victim identification following mass fatality events is critically important. Extensive traumatic injuries and body fragmentation add complexity to this process. World Trade Center (WTC) identification efforts have been ongoing for over 20 years and this study tracks identification trends from the 2753 known WTC victims and the 21,905 recovered remains.

Victim identification and body completeness based on last known location at the World Trade Center.

This analysis focuses on the identification efforts conducted by the New York City Office of Chief Medical Examiner (NYC OCME) over a 20-year period from September 11, 2001 to September 11, 2021. Due to this unprecedented level of commitment to victim identification, a wealth of data has been collected over the two-decade period and is still being collected as identification efforts are ongoing. The results of this data analysis are not only informative for the World Trade Center (WTC) victims, but may also be instructional for other large-scale, protracted victim identification efforts.