Integrating CHGIS with other Gazetteer Standards and Classification Systems Merrick Lex Berman, Harvard Yenching Institute PNC – ECAI, Guadalajara Dec 2001
Jan 12, 2016
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