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Using Historical Maps in Scientific Studies

Part of the book series: SpringerBriefs in Geography ((BRIEFSGEOGRAPHY))

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Abstract

Historical maps are fascinating to look at and contain valuable retrospective place information difficult to find elsewhere. However, the full potential of historical maps has not been realized because the users of scanned historical maps and the developers of digital map processing technologies are from a wide range of disciplines and often work in silos. This book aims to make the first connection between the map user community and the developers of digital map processing technologies by illustrating several applications, challenges, and best practices in working with historical maps. This chapter presents a brief introduction to various types of historical maps and the scientific studies that could benefit from using them. Further, the chapter summarizes the general considerations critical for building successful computational processes that can be used to analyze historical map content. Finally, the chapter provides an overview of the book structure, describing the connections between individual chapters.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The reader is referred to the multi-volume book [HWL87] for a grand overview of map making (cartography) from prehistorical times to the twentieth century.

  2. 2.

    Professional cartographers would engrave map features on several metal plates and then combine them to print the maps with each plate using an appropriate color ink (e.g., brown for topographic contour lines and black for text labels and roads.)

  3. 3.

    http://www.davidrumsey.com/.

  4. 4.

    https://www.loc.gov/collections/?fa=original-format:map.

  5. 5.

    http://ngmdb.usgs.gov/maps/TopoView/.

  6. 6.

    The first Landsat satellite was operational in the 1970s.

  7. 7.

    For example, a map processing system for text recognition requiring the user to first collect thousands of text samples from their maps for training is impractical for a scientist who wants to process two map scans from the sixteenth century.

  8. 8.

    https://wiki.dbpedia.org.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Spatial Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Yao-Yi Chiang

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Weiwei Duan

  3. Department of Geography, University of Colorado, Boulder, CO, USA

    Stefan Leyk & Johannes H. Uhl

  4. Information Sciences Institute, University of Southern California, Marina del Rey, CA, USA

    Craig A. Knoblock

Authors
  1. Yao-Yi Chiang
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  2. Weiwei Duan
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  3. Stefan Leyk
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  4. Johannes H. Uhl
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  5. Craig A. Knoblock
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Chiang, YY., Duan, W., Leyk, S., Uhl, J.H., Knoblock, C.A. (2020). Introduction. In: Using Historical Maps in Scientific Studies. SpringerBriefs in Geography. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-66908-3_1

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