Integrating CHGIS with other Gazetteer Standards and Classification Systems

1. Integrating CHGIS with other Gazetteer Standards and Classification Systems Merrick Lex Berman, Harvard Yenching Institute PNC – ECAI, Guadalajara Dec 2001

2. research partners Harvard Yenching Institute Fudan University, Center for Historical Geographical Studies ACASIAN, Griffith University Academia Sinica – Taipei, Inst for Information Sciences sponsor CHGIS Organization

3. Tan Qixiang’s “Historical Atlas of China”

4. CHGIS raw input tables

5. CHGIS spatial data (boundaries)

6. CHGIS spatial data (points)

7. CHGIS spatial data (overlay)

8. points within boundaries

9. thiessen polygons

10. 1820 changping quota (normalized by area)

11. CHGIS raw input tables

12. location - point 1 to point 2 placename - “Shawmut” to “Boston” administrative status - township to county seat feature types – dirt road to paved road what are the temporal variables of “places?”

13. place being tracked over time independently changing variables

14. tracking temporal “instances”

15. each place object has many “instances” of change over time: place objects – temporal instances

16. each placename record may have many sub-types, such as: character sets, transliterations, or pronunciations character sets transliterations placenames

17. Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) – Feature Type Thesaurus hydrographic features . seas . . oceans . . . ocean currents Bureau of Land Management, Taipei – NGIS cartographic elements feature classification schema

18. Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Feature Type Thesaurus: physiographic features -cliffs hydrographic features -aquifers -drainage basins -streams --rivers ---rapids feature types - hierarchical model

19. each feature instance may have many “feature types” feature types may have many associated feature types and glosses associated feature types glosses feature types – relational model

20. a private residence is donated to a temple, affecting tax revenues both for the building and the fields under cultivation at different times the same place object may have different temporal instances of a particular feature type feature types change over time

21. a single building may have many functions over time, recorded with multiple “instances” of feature types: temporal instances to track changing features

22. tracking a building’s changing “feature types” associated feature types glosses feature types – changes over time

23. integrating feature type thesauri

24. list of available Feature Type thesauri: 1 – Alexandria Digital Library Feature Types (1156 terms) 2 – River Research Group Feature Types (435 terms) 3 – Taiwan NGIS Feature Types (2000 terms) 4 – CHGIS (220 terms) cross-searching feature type thesauri

25. each system classifies its contents NIMA Classes: A – Admin Area H = Hydro L = Land Area P = Pop Place R = Road S = Spot T = Contour U = Undersea V = Vegetation rough classification for interoperability

26. hydrographic features search searching by rough class

27. list of available “hydrographic” Feature Types in each thesauri: 1 – Alexandria Digital Library Feature Types (158 / 1156 terms) 2 – River Research Group Feature Types (380 / 435 terms) 3 – Taiwan NGIS Feature Types (200 / 2000 terms) 4 – CHGIS (37 /220 terms) comparing contents among thesauri

28. evolving interoperability

29. Records in the unrelated thesauri Concordance table between thesauri concordance table

30. use ADL Feature Types as a basic standard for interoperable searching and Unicode (UTF-8) • specialized thesauri submitted to the testbed should include a linktable with: • - Feature Type definition • - Feature Type Enlgish language gloss • - Feature Type match to ADL type • - “locale” for the Feature Type • - date range for the Feature Type 3. testbed editor identifies ADL types with high numbers of submitted specialized sub-types 4. Testbed editor enlists help of submitters to identify concordances between their own Feature Types and those in other thesauri proposed actions

31. use ADL Feature Types as a basic standard for interoperable searching and Unicode (UTF-8) ISO – 8601 Date and Time Notation “with extension for older dates” • specialized thesauri submitted to the testbed should include a linktable with: • - Feature Type definition • - Feature Type Enlgish language gloss • - Feature Type match to ADL type • - “locale” for the Feature Type • - date range for the Feature Type Open GIS draft suggestion: 1) yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm:ss.sss or 1999-08-12T09:40:23.558 Where T = Time 2) Periodic events are indicated with a P then a value and unit measure, as in: yyyy-mmPunitY or 1980-06/2000-06/P1M 3) BCE dates take the letter “B” as a prefix, so B221 = BCE221. 4) Geologic dates in the distant past take the letters “K, M, G” as prefixes, meaning thousands, millions, and billions of years before the present, respectively. K16 = 16,000 years ago M120 = 120,000,000 years ago G3 = 3,000,000,000 years ago 3. testbed editor identifies ADL types with high numbers of submitted specialized sub-types 4. Testbed editor enlists help of submitters to identify concordances between their own Feature Types and those in other thesauri date formats proposed actions

32. CHGIS: China Historical GISProject website: fas.harvard.edu/~chgis