GB Historical Atlas 20211103 Google-Apple Machine Translation from German to English

Hello. In this short presentation as part of the “Modeling and Digital Maps” seminar at the University of Cologne, we would like to briefly introduce you to the “Vision of Britain” web portal. This is a new, dynamic form of “Historical Atlas”, a “constructed vision” or visualization of how Great Britain has changed in the recent past, especially in the last 200 years. The presentation is also based on a research paper by Prof. Humphrey Southall of Portsmouth University from 2016. The subtitle of the work describes the scope of the project: the integration and processing of historical maps, government statistical surveys and literary travel narratives or historical travel guides for online access.

First we will present the "use case", the users and sponsors. Then we look at the content, i.e. the original statistical sources, their implementation as a database and the new visualization options. We will also talk about special challenges and how to overcome them. Finally, we give feedback on the user experience and summarize what we have learned in 6 key points.

It is important to understand the difference between this electronic historical atlas and a traditional GIS: they are geo-semantic data sets, not simple spatial surveys. We are dealing with named locations and geometric spaces or surfaces. The focus is on changing the space and the use of space in the near past. Robust statistical and geometric data collection begins at the beginning of the 19th century, while travel experiences in written form from the 17th and 18th centuries are projected onto the later maps. The portal is aimed at the general population interested in culture and history, at schools and universities, researchers and laypeople, or at everyone who wants to learn more about the life of their ancestors or the history of a place. Accordingly, the project was largely financed from funds from the National Lottery. The digitization initiative was led by Jisc, a non-profit organization.

Much of the data used is freely available and is under the Creative Commons license. This slide lists the government statistical survey records. We see censuses, births, marriages and deaths, agricultural surveys, election results, and social security data. It is important that all values are listed in a single column of a single table.

This makes it possible to display the statistical data not only - like a conventional GIS - as a snapshot in the form of a map, but also as a cross-section and as a time series - without having to manage multiple copies of the data or ready-made projections. Here we see, for example, an overview of the fields of employment of the working population since 1850 and a time series of the unemployment rate - for Great Britain in general and the town of Jarrow with its shipyard in particular, between the two world wars.

The implementation of the web portal is based on an object-relational database - right. The system is conceptually divided into three main tables: statistical values with different contents; formally defined geographical groupings, mostly of an administrative or political nature, sometimes also purely statistical definitions; and places, that is, settlements where people lived and wrote about. The architecture shown on the left shows which additional information is managed in addition to the value series in additional columns of the same table.

A particular challenge is the constantly changing administrative definition of geographical areas. Not only do boundaries change, there are also different types of definitions, some of which exist at the same time. For example, the population for the Cambridgeshire shown here is completely different, depending on whether one looks at the registration definition or the administrative unit. Some places are abandoned and forgotten, or the digital dimensions have not yet been digitized despite existing sources. All in all, an expensive and time-consuming job! The structure of the administrative unit Ontology (or AUO) is shown on the left.

Now we come to the second type of sources used by the portal and sources related to places and geographical areas: scanned historical maps, sometimes with a very high scale down to the smallest

details, travel guides and travel reports. As an example on the right the places described by Celia Finnes on a journey from Coventry to London in 1607. The procedure for creating or setting up the concordance tables is shown in the diagram and is linked to geographical coordinates that can be displayed on a map via the location.

About the user experience: Google Analytics shows us that most users find their way into the system through a location-specific geographic website. On the right, an example of such a website, with links to the additional content described above. While most GIS do not appear because the graphics are mostly invisible to search bots, the use of text and IsPartOf relations in the AUO means that many smaller places from our atlas - here a sample of 188 - achieve a high Google ranking. After a few years of slow development, the web portal has now reached around half a million users per year. Banner advertising has now become an important source of income for financing the team and the IT infrastructure.

What have we learned over the years that could be of use to other creators of historical databases? First: understand the wishes of your target user group, establish and stay in dialogue, e.g. through a blog. Do your own DIY practice tests. Google Analytics data is helpful to improve the user experience. Second, don't confuse a printing press - the standard GIS - with a library like this one - or an atlas. Nonsensical maps can be created too quickly from semantic information. As a web author, part of the job is to provide the user with interpretations. It is more important than the flexible map display to give the user the option of “drill down” to the original data. Third, an atlas is more than a table of contents for books and maps. An atlas offers the reader a collage of different representations with usually as much text description as maps and graphics. This atlas allows the unambiguous data to be presented in a wide variety of forms: as an (interpreted) map or time series, in the original tabular form, as a data set.

Fourth, the definition of the non-geographic structural model is just as important - perhaps more difficult - than the geographic one. For example the AUO database structure and link to the subsystem of the original sources. Existing standards such as Dublin Core should be used where possible. Fifth, very few people read an atlas from cover to cover. It is therefore important to ensure good referencing by search engines when building the website, i.e. a hybrid solution of geospatial and geo-semantic architecture. The system should also be available to blind people via screen readers.

Last but not least, building a web portal poses many challenges for the developer. It is certainly more complex and therefore more expensive to create than the traditional atlas. However, the online atlas does not have to be printed at great expense. This means that your own history and the life of your ancestors are not only available to specialists, but are also freely accessible to a broad, interested audience. Thanks.