Abstract

Historical geographic data are essential for a variety of studies of cancer and environmental epidemiology, urbanization, and landscape ecology. However, existing data sources typically contain only contemporary information. Historical maps hold a great deal of detailed geographic information at various times in the past. Yet, finding relevant maps is difficult, and the map content is not machine-readable. This chapter presents the challenges and trends in building a map processing, modeling, linking, and publishing framework. The framework will enable querying historical map collections as a unified and structured spatiotemporal source in which individual geographic phenomena (extracted from maps) are modeled (described) with semantic descriptions and linked to other data sources (e.g., DBpedia). This framework will allow making use of historical geographic datasets from a variety of maps, efficiently, over …

Date

March 4, 2026

Authors

Yao-Yi Chiang, Weiwei Duan, Stefan Leyk, Johannes H Uhl, Craig A Knoblock, Yao-Yi Chiang, Weiwei Duan, Stefan Leyk, Johannes H Uhl, Craig A Knoblock

Source

Using Historical Maps in Scientific Studies: Applications, Challenges, and Best Practices

Pages

37-63

Publisher

Springer International Publishing