dh101 2013/2014 course 8 - historical geographical information systems (hgis), procedural 3d...

Digital Humanities 101 - 2013/2014 - Course 8

Digital Humanities Laboratory

Melanie Fournier - Frederic Kaplan

[email protected] - [email protected]

Correction of the bias inmy grading

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Digital Humanities 101 - 2013/2014 - Course 8 | 2013 2o

Semester 1 : Content of each course

• (1) 19.09 Introduction to the course / Live Tweeting and Collective note

taking

• (2) 25.09 Introduction to Digital Humanities / Wordpress / First assignment

• (3) 2.10 Introduction to the Venice Time Machine project / Zotero

•9.10 No course

• (4) 16.10 Digitization techniques / Deadline first assignment

• (5) 23.10 Datafication / Presentation of projects

• (6) 30.10 Semantic modelling / RDF / Deadline peer-reviewing of first

assignment

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Semester 1 : Content of each course

• (7) 6.11 Pattern recognition / OCR / Semantic disambiguation

• (8) 13.11 Historical Geographic Information Systems, Procedural modeling /

City Engine / Deadline Project selection

• (9) 20.11 Crowdsourcing / Wikipedia / OpenStreetMap

• (10) 27.11 Cultural heritage interfaces and visualisation / Museographic

experiences

•4.12 Group work on the projects

•11.12 Oral exam / Presentation of projects / Deadline Project blog

•18.12 Oral exam / Presentation of projects

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Geographic Information System (GIS) within the DigitalHumanities

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What is a GIS ?

”A GIS is a kind of database management system that links each item of data to a

coordinate-based representation of its location, such as point, line, polygone, or pixel” (Ian N.

Gregory 2008).

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The Historical Geographic Information System (H-GIS)

For approximately 17 years, the GIS and more specifically the ”Historical GIS” appeared,

carrying new potentialities for studying the past (Knowles 2002, 2005, 2008 ; Gregory and Ell

2008 ; Goodchild 2008).

•Geospatial technologies

•Analytical techniques

•Display and analyze information located somewhere on Earth

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Why scholars are insterested in GIS potentialities ?

•Visualization of information in a geographical/geopolitical context

•Examination of those information at different scales

•Finding, describing and explaining spatial patterns (Gregory 2008)

•Addition of collateral data

•Possibility of sharing the data (Goodchild 2008)

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What are themain challenges of using GIS within History ?

•Historians skepticism towards computer science (Gregory, Kemp and

Mostern 2001 ; Bodenhamer 2008)

•Historians relationship with geography and cartography

•Management and representation of uncertainty, incompleteness,

errorprone data

•Management of paradata (metadata within the GIS field)

•Access to the sources, documentation of the sources (Grossner 2010)

•Rectification of old maps

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Evolution of the projects

The 2004 conference ”History and Geography : Assessing the Role of Geographic Information

in Historical Scholarship” presented and criticized the first generation of projects (http:

// hul. harvard. edu/ publications/ hul_ notes_ 1319/ activities. html ).

The objective is, as the conference did, to give you a good idea of the variety of GIS

techniques for history.

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http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/hul_notes_1319/activities.html

http://hul.harvard.edu/publications/hul_notes_1319/activities.html

Scannedmanuscripts, transcription and GIS visualization.

Salem Witch Trials Archive - 2002

(http: // salem. lib. virginia. edu/ maps. html )

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http://salem.lib.virginia.edu/maps.html

The problem of administrative boundary changes.

•Nowadays borders/boundaries are seen as standard units.

•The main issues are : they shift through time, the representation of space

is different through time, sometimes it is even impossible to determine

the exact boundaries.

•Different possibilities exist to represent the administrative space

(polygons, polylines, or even points in certain cases).

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Great Britain Historical GIS - 2001

(http: // www. visionofbritain. org. uk/ ,http:

// www. gbhgis. org/ )

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http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/, http://www.gbhgis.org/

http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk/, http://www.gbhgis.org/


China Historical GIS - 2001-2010

(http: // www. fas. harvard. edu/ ~ chgis/ )

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http://www.fas.harvard.edu/~chgis/


Collaborative GIS on Italian borders - 2012

(http: // geo-larhra. ish-lyon. cnrs. fr/ ?q=

atlas-historique/ regroupement-de-territoires )

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http://geo-larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/?q=atlas-historique/regroupement-de-territoires

http://geo-larhra.ish-lyon.cnrs.fr/?q=atlas-historique/regroupement-de-territoires

Digital editions of maps, Digital atlases

The Peutinger Map - 2004

(http: // peutinger. atlantides. org/ map-a/ ,

http ://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html)

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http://peutinger.atlantides.org/map-a/


The Peutinger Map - 2004

(http: // peutinger. atlantides. org/ map-a/ ,

http ://www.cambridge.org/us/talbert/index.html)

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http://peutinger.atlantides.org/map-a/


DARMC - Digital Atlas of Roman and Medieval Civilization

(http: // darmc. harvard. edu/ icb/ icb. do )

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http://darmc.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do

Military History

The Valley of the Shadow - 1993-2007

(http: // valley. lib. virginia. edu/ )

The Battle of Gettysburg - 2013

(http: // storymaps. esri. com/ stories/ 2013/ gettysburg/ )

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http://valley.lib.virginia.edu/

http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/2013/gettysburg/

Military History





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Route planner

ORBIS : The Stanford Geospatial Network Model of the Roman World -

2012 (http: // orbis. stanford. edu )

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http://orbis.stanford.edu

Modeling Venice Shipping Lanes - Demo with ArcGIS forDesktop 10.1

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Some softwares for your projects :

•Quantum GIS http://www.qgis.org/fr/site/

•GRASS GIS http://grass.osgeo.org/

•ArcGIS http://enacsoft.epfl.ch/lasig/

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http://www.qgis.org/fr/site/

http://grass.osgeo.org/

http://enacsoft.epfl.ch/lasig/

Reconstructing past landscapes and urbanmorphology.

Nolli’s map - 2005 (http: // nolli. uoregon. edu/ preface. html )

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http://nolli.uoregon.edu/preface.html


Visualizing Venice - (http: // visualizingvenice. org/ about/ l )

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http://visualizingvenice.org/about/l

CityEngine Demo

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Conclusion

•Translating historical sources into a GIS database can be a complex and long process

(Knowles 2008, Gregory 2008).

•GIS provide/create new knowledge about geographies of the past.

•GIS offers an alternate view of the history (dynamic representation of time and place) and

it’s a good reflexive tool (Jessop 2004, Bodenhamer 2008).

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Conclusion






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References

Gregory, Ian N., and Paul S. Ell. 2007. Historical GIS : Technologies, Methodologies, and

Scholarship. Cambridge University Press.

Grossner, Karl. 2010. Representing Historical Knowledge in Geographic Information Systems.

University of California, Santa Barbara.

Jessop, Martyn.2004. The visualization of Spatial Data in The Humanities. Literary and

Linguistic Computing 19 (3). pp. 335-350.

Knowles, Anne Kelly. 2002. Past Time, Past Place : Gis for History. ESRI, Inc.

Knowles, Anne Kelly, and Amy Hillier. 2008. Placing History : How Maps, Spatial Data, and

GIS Are Changing Historical Scholarship. ESRI, Inc.

http://www.maphistory.info/index.html

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http://www.maphistory.info/index.html

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