Integrating CHGIS with other Gazetteer Standards and Classification Systems

Integrating CHGIS with other Gazetteer Standards and Classification Systems

Merrick Lex Berman, Harvard Yenching Institute

PNC – ECAI, Guadalajara Dec 2001

CHGIS Organization

sponsor

research partners

Harvard Yenching Institute

Fudan University, Center for Historical Geographical Studies

ACASIAN, Griffith University

Academia Sinica – Taipei, Inst for Information Sciences

Tan Qixiang’s “Historical Atlas of China”

CHGIS raw input tables

CHGIS spatial data (boundaries)

CHGIS spatial data (points)

CHGIS spatial data (overlay)

points within boundaries

thiessen polygons

1820 changping quota (normalized by area)

CHGIS raw input tables

what are the temporal variables of “places?”

placename - “Shawmut” to “Boston”

feature types – dirt road to paved road

location - point 1 to point 2

administrative status - township to county seat

independently changing variables

place being tracked over time

tracking temporal “instances”

place objects – temporal instances

each place object has many “instances” of change over time:

placenames

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

character sets transliterations

feature classification schema

Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) – Feature Type Thesaurus

Bureau of Land Management, Taipei – NGIS cartographic elements

hydrographic features . seas . . oceans . . . ocean currents

feature types - hierarchical model

hydrographic features

-aquifers

-drainage basins

-streams

--rivers

---rapids

physiographic features

-cliffs

Alexandria Digital Library (ADL) Feature Type Thesaurus:

feature types – relational model

each feature instance may have many “feature types”

feature types may have many associated feature types and glosses

associated feature types

glosses

feature types change over time

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

temporal instances to track changing features

a single building may have many functions over time, recorded with multiple “instances” of feature types:

feature types – changes over time

tracking a building’s changing “feature types”

associated feature types

glosses

integrating feature type thesauri

cross-searching feature type thesauri

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)

rough classification for interoperability

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

searching by rough class

hydrographic features search

comparing contents among thesauri

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)

evolving interoperability

concordance table

Records in the unrelated thesauri

Concordance table between thesauri

proposed actions

1. use ADL Feature Types as a basic standard for interoperable searching and Unicode (UTF-8)

2. 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

4. Testbed editor enlists help of submitters to identify concordances between their own Feature Types and those in other thesauri

3. testbed editor identifies ADL types with high numbers of submitted specialized sub-types

proposed actions

1. use ADL Feature Types as a basic standard for interoperable searching and Unicode (UTF-8)

2. 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

4. Testbed editor enlists help of submitters to identify concordances between their own Feature Types and those in other thesauri

3. testbed editor identifies ADL types with high numbers of submitted specialized sub-types

date formats

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 agoM120 = 120,000,000 years ago

G3 = 3,000,000,000 years ago

ISO – 8601 Date and Time Notation “with extension for older dates”

Open GIS draft suggestion:

CHGIS: China Historical GIS Project

website: fas.harvard.edu/~chgis