Hi Humphrey,
I am at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia and we have been working on a
world boundaries project out of our library for the past year where we are
creating vector files going back to WWII. There is not very much in the way
of existing GIS data files and those that do exist can be problematic. We
hope to achieve a dataset that works well together if you wanted to do
analysis over multiple years. Let me know if you would like to discuss this
topic further with us and looking forward to hearing more about your
inquiry.
Best regards,
Michael Page
--
> Michael Page
> Geographer
> Emory University
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On 8/6/10 8:05 AM, "Humphrey Southall" <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> This is not about Ireland ...
>
> As some members of this list will know, some of the funding for the GB
> Historical GIS team in 2006-8 came from an EU project, which enabled us to
> remove our dependence on the OS National Grid coordinate system and otherwise
> internationalise our framework, integrate some very detailed data covering the
> past administrative geographies of Estonia and Sweden, and add data on the
> states of Europe and their changing boundaries.
>
> The vagaries of European funding meant that was looking like a complete dead
> end, but more recently we have started to work with the Center for
> Geographical Analysis at Harvard on the idea of a _Global_ historical GIS, and
> are seeking funding. The overall project is now very much based on the hybrid
> ontology-GIS architecture we have developed for Britain, which means we can
> hold a great deal of information about administrative bodies even if we don't
> know their exact boundaries -- but it is obviously better if we do.
>
> We have already computerised most of the textual information in Hertslet's
> "Map of Europe by Treaty", plus later listings of changes produced by the US
> State Department, and would be extending this to the rest of the world.
>
> I am currently trying to say what needs to be done on the boundary mapping
> side, and coming up with an almost complete blank on EXISTING digital boundary
> files for historical international boundaries. There is obviously the IEG-Maps
> system in Mainz, but that is mostly about central Europe, and mostly
> un-georeferenced Postscript files, not GIS files.
>
> Our data model, and the way it lets us work in continuous time, means we are
> certainly planning something new. We are also planning to document the work
> very thoroughly, linking back to original sources (which will often be maps
> that are now on-line as digital images).
>
> However, there must be more existing digital files than I have located so far.
> Suggestions?
>
> NB this is specifically about historical boundaries, so I am excluding the
> last 40 years and digital boundaries that were modern when they were created
> but are now a bit historical. It is also about vector boundary data sets
> (Shape files or similar), not digital images of old maps; we know that the
> latter are now abundant, and expect to make great use of them.
>
> If the project goes ahead, the new boundary construction would be mostly
> limited to international boundaries, but the system would be designed to
> assimilate more detailed boundaries from other researchers.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Humphrey Southall
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