TOWARD AN ARCHITECTURAL HERITAGE TIMEMAP Islamic Cities Historic Maps Project and the ECAI/T IMEMAP Methodology Future's new approach to conservation/preservation

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The Fourth Dimension

T O W A R D A N A R C H I T E C T U R A L H E R I T A G E T I M E M A P I s lamic Ci t i es His to r ic Maps Pro jec t and the ECAI/T IMEMAP Methodo logy

Future’s new approach to conservation/preservation

Dr. Hesham Khairy*, Dr. Ayman Wanas

The Fourth Dimension

Do we need the Fourth Dimension? Conventional methods of heritage conservation

tempted to deal with the problem at two and three dimensional perspectives. Isn’t about time to

look to the problems from new ways and dimensions? The time as a fourth dimension can be

ideal to search and investigate its impact for future understanding to today exists, the future

heritage.

“Whatever ones philosophical views on the nature of the Universe, for most practical

purposes, human beings exist within a three-dimensional space moving inexorably through time.

Archaeology and urban preservation, as a discipline intimately concerned with human beings,

time and space, has paid remarkably little attention to the difficult issue of effectively recording

and presenting the products of human activity in a spatial-temporal context. These methods of

time description in particular have their roots firmly in 19th century natural sciences and mid-

20th century scientific method”.1

Always, historical elements unfold against a backdrop of urban, geography, time and the

human cultural matrix. Many project and specific approaches exist to recording urban and

cultural data, but all tend to be the product of local interests, specific research or administrative

imperatives. Such an effort and approaches isolate urban and cultural data from one-another and

from the broader context of geography, urban and human history, limiting their value for

education, cultural understanding and exchange.

Time and Urban Growth

One area where temporal considerations have long been specifically recognized is in satellite

remote sensing, where the use of a time series of coincident scenes may be used to identify the

evolution of a phenomenon (e.g. floods, bushfires, crop growth, deforestation or urban

expansion) or as a means of identifying architectural and urban changes to any city from seasonal

response. The US Geological Survey EROS Data Center’s Temporal Urban Mapping project

(figure 1) aims to visualize the growth of US urban centers, with care to Washington-Baltimore

area and San Francisco Bay areas. 2

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Figure 1: Time and Urban Growth Source: EROS Data Center UCSB, 1994.

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A. Appendix of Urban Matrix to the Missouri River. Temporal Urban Mapping project, USA.

B. Lower Missouri River Historical Urban Growth, Temporal Urban Mapping project, USA.

C. Data Analysis Example of the Temporal Urban Mapping project helps the Future Urban Decision Making.

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Anther major project was funded by NASA-Ames Research Centre and Hunter College in

early 90th. The project aims to model the growth of the San Francisco Bay area (Figure 2). The

Urban Dynamics project analyzes land use change in urban environments in order to provide a

historical perspective of land use change and an assessment of the spatial patterns, rates,

correlation, trends, and impacts of that change the city future. This project develops and refines

methods for future urban reconstruction, building rehabilitation, cultural elements preservation,

geographic analysis, modeling, prediction, monitoring, and impacts assessment.3 The goal of this

project is to provide a greater understanding of the urban changes occurring in metropolitan

areas. Objectives are to:

• Develop methods for urban reconstruction, geographic analysis, and regional assessments

of urban land use change.

• Identify the spatial linkages between the physiographic and socio-economic variables that

contribute to urban growth.

• Develop and test models for predicting future urban transformations with some

statistically defined confidence.

• Provide the public and decision-makers with the data and information resources needed to

make informed decisions regarding future urban development and environmentally

sustainable economic growth.

The data for these visualizations is partly historical (for the earlier parts of the sequence) and

partly derived from analysis of satellite imagery (for more recent times).

Archaeological and Historical Applications

Over the last few years there have been increasing numbers of papers which apply some

form of GIS-based spatial- temporal mapping to archaeological and urban historic data or

landscape data of archaeological relevance. For example, Snow (1997)4 uses a sequence of maps

generated with MapInfo to create an animation of Iroquois settlement from AD 750 to the

present; Spikins (1997)5 presents a sequence of reconstructed vegetation maps for the Holocene

and discusses their significance for population change; Nunez et al. (1997)6 animate the changing

configuration of the landscape due to post-glacial sea- level and isocratic effects.

Museums are increasingly using animations to present information as part of exhibits,

particularly in the presentation of changing urban and landscape configurations or historical

information in a geographical context. There are a growing number of animations and VRML

models appearing on the WWW, for example those produced by the Illinois State Museum GIS

Lab.

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Figure 2: The Urban Dynamic Project, San Francisco and the Bay Area. Source: EROS Data Center UCSB, 1994.

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A. San Francisco and the Bay Area 1912 Historical Map, the Urban Dynamic Project.

B. Cultural Data sets, The Urban Dynamic Project. C. Dynamic urban growth from 1792 to 1992, San Francisco

and the Bay Area, The Urban Dynamic Project.

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In almost every case, the application is intended as case-study rather than a general

methodology and the final product is a simple animation of individually-generated time-slice

maps, or an animation built from separate components in a multimedia authoring environment.

Nothing I have seen so far allows the interactive control and querying of a GIS-based temporal

database and interactive generation of animations from the database. This is the main aim of

using the TimeMap methodology in our project.

Therefore, the Islamic cities Historic maps project aims to record and present urban

development and historical information relating to Islamic cities from the 15th, to early 20th

centuries. We are currently concentrating on data collection for the historic core of these cities.

Our first step, which is the city of Cairo, have included digitization of a modern topographic base

map, creation of a digital elevation model and registration of available historic maps into the

system.

Overlain on this, we have a set of 19th century occupant records (19th century Cairo map)

and we are working on the assembly of a variety of other resources, including engineering and

administrative plans and records, written accounts, drawings and photographs, excavation

records, museum collections and syntheses.

ICMC, ECAI/TIMEMAP Methodology

The Main element of our methodology is using geographic information systems (GIS) to

develop an explicit methodological approach to recording urban and cultural data in time and

space. The term "urban and cultural data" is deliberately broad and can include anything from

archaeological site locations to historical census records from the buildings characteristics to the

distribution of religions and from details of a city’s history to the rise and fall of empires.

The methodology allows different data resources to be integrated into a one theme of

structure and cross-examined together by defining a conceptual mapping (materialized as a

metadata table) between an explicit spatial-temporal data model (the Snapshot-Transition model)

and the data actually recorded by any particular project (in whatever format). The project thereby

aims as one of its goals to isolate the urban and cultural data and barriers to greater

understanding, in terms of space, time and technique, between urban cultural research projects.

The methodological approach is complemented by the development of pragmatic data storage,

indexing, access and display methods. (Figure 3)

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Figure 3: ICMC, ECAI/TIMEMAP Methodology Source: ECAI/Clearinghouse Manual.

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A. Distributed Data Base. Timemap Software.

B. GIS Map Data Set. Timemap Software.

C. Cross References Metadata Clearinghouse. Timemap Software.

D. Development of Dynamic map Interface. Timemap Software.

These changes involve all the key components of urban systems—human, natural, and built—and their interactions both at specific geographic scales and across scales. They afford opportunities but at the same time create new problems for urban futures that we are not yet equipped to understand. Urban theories and models abound but most are valid only at specific scales (e.g., neighborhood, metropolitan area, or regional scale) and/or address a rather narrow spectrum of issues from within a particular disciplinary perspective (e.g., economic, environmental, planning, transportation, etc.).

ECAI Methodology……………….

First of all, the clearinghouse is intended to provide a one-stop shop for historical and cultural data of substance. It does this, not by collecting and storing data or indexing everything that exists, but by maintaining a controlled catalogue of on-line data held by other agencies or individuals, and enforcing data documentation standards through metadata . While individuals can register their datasets freely with the clearinghouse through a web browser interface, ECAI editorial control intervenes to filter out inappropriate datasets and ensure that registered datasets are adequately described by descriptive metadata (based on the Dublin Core metadata standard) to allow co nsistent searching. Secondly, the clearinghouse stores metadata which allow suitable software – notably the TimeMap interface software – to search for, connect to and drill down into the data for a particular on -line dataset, applying queries and displaying results in map-based or text -based form. In other words, the clearinghouse enables direct access to the content of varied on-line datasets through a consistent interface – and simultaneous display of data from several sources – rather than merely a pointer to their location and a unique interface for each one. Thirdly, software and procedures developed by the TimeMap project team allow individuals or small research units – which may lack the technical skills or infrastructure to set up their own data and make it accessible with demanding commercial products – to place their data on-line using modest PC hardware, free software and simple database techniques.

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What Is Timemap?

ECAI/TimeMap is a flexible map delivery system which generates interactive time-

enabled historical maps by overlaying historical datasets distributed across the Internet. TimeMap

can display and animate the development of a site, a city or an empire, allowing the user to delve

into detailed information for any point on the map and discover new patterns by overlaying

information from many different digital data sources.

TimeMap has been developed by Dr Ian Johnson and staff of the Archaeological

Computing Laboratory at the University of Sydney, Australia. TimeMap has been adopted as the

core methodology for the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative (University of California Berkeley),

which has provided funding for the development of Internet map delivery and web-based data

collection. The TimeMap methodology is being used to develop Sydney TimeMap, a computer-

based presentation of the history of Sydney. A pilot kiosk, installed at the Museum of Sydney in

November 2000, is designed to field-test the data management methodology and research public

reaction to this novel method of presenting history. The SPIRT-funded research project will lead

to a TimeMap-based gallery at the Museum of Sydney, due to open in 2003.7 (Figure 4)

Why Use ECAI/TIMEMAP Methodology?

TimeMap is unique in allowing the creation of time-enabled (time-aware) maps from

distributed databases. It also allows us to include the animation of map data and the ability to link

from features on the map to information such as images, web pages, database ent ries or

multimedia. The main goal of TimeMap software is primarily aimed at the display of urban,

archaeological and historical data such as historical maps and images, the growth of cities, the

spread of dynasties and empires or the distribution of archaeological sites. Therefore, it is a

flexible general-purpose tool and can be used to display a wide collection of time/information

data.

The ICMC Project (http://www.icmcnet.edu.eg)

With the ICMC (Islamic Cities Historic Map Collection) project, I have attempted to

outline the urban fabric of the Islamic cities starting with city of Cairo. Such a recording of urban

growth through maps and historic data in a spatial-temporal context, will be a model to future

expectation on how the city will expand and how can we preserve the today’s subsist, tomorrow’s

heritage. Temporal GIS is a complex field, with many ramifications and many potential avenues

of research; but I believe there are opportunities to make substantial progress and generate useful

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Figure 4: What Is Timemap? Source: ECAI/Timemap Online Manual.

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What Is Timemap? A. Electronic Cultural Atlas

Initiative Project, ECAI, University Of Ca lifornia , Berkeley.

B. Temporal GIS Dynamics Project, USA.

C. Sydney TimeMap Clearinghouse.

D. Sydney Urban Growth, Sydney Timemap Project.

TimeMap Methodology is being used to develop Sydney TimeMap, a computer-based presentation of the history of Sydney. A pilot kiosk, installed at the Museum of Sydney in November 2000, is designed to field-test the data management methodology and research public reaction to this novel method of presenting history. The SPIRT -funded research project will lead to a TimeMap-based gallery at the Museum of Sydney, due to open in 2003.

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practical solutions by defining the problems clearly and tackling them in a pragmatic fashion.

In designing the ICMC project we have concentrated on the core issue of providing an

explicit and robust methodology for recording spatial-temporal features, with a historic map

Sequence: A sequence of geo-corrected historic maps draped over a recreation of the historical

topography of historical Islamic Cities. Our Methodology in presenting urban, Historical and

cultural heritage follows four steps.

1. Time-enabled GIS

TimeMap defines an explicit methodology for recording time-based phenomena in a

GIS database and both the windows display software and the java mapping applet apply

time queries automatically based on a time selection bar in the user interface. The time bar,

which can be zoomed in to individual days, months or years, or out to the full time range of

the datasets displayed allows the user to apply dynamic SQL time queries on both remote

and local data by simply dragging the ends of the bar to encompass the desired time period

.The map display is redrawn and updated on the fly as the time limits are changed. In

general, conventional GIS have no special way of dealing with time. (Figure 5)

2. Collective Distributed GIS

TimeMap windows software; TMView includes a map-based metadata clearinghouse

browser which can search and access internet-accessible datasets through the ECAI

Metadata Clearinghouse and can integrate both local and remote datasets together in a time-

enabled map window. The TMView metadata clearinghouse browser allows:

• connection to remote datasets

• filtering of the clearinghouse based on spatial and temporal limits and metadata

searches

• display of bounding boxes for datasets on a map of the world

• display of metadata for selected datasets, including extended HTML-based

documentation

• Display of thumbnail and detail views of datasets.

• Remote datasets are filtered on the server, the subset is downloaded and cached

locally, allowing for offline access and the responsiveness of a local application

rather than Internet data transfers. ( Figure 6 )

3. Interactive Web solutions

The TimeMap project has developed a Java map viewer which is now time-enabled and

which may be embedded in any web page as an interface to internet-accessible datasets,

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Figure 5,6,7,8 : ICMC/ECAI/TIMEMAP Methodology Source: Johnson, I. (eds) Archaeological Applications of GIS: Proceedings of Colloquium II, UISPP XIIIth Congress, Forli, Italy (September 1996). Sydney: Sydney University Archaeological Methods Series 5.

Figure 5 Figure 5 Figure 5

Figure 6

Figure 7

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Figure 5: Time-enabled GIS, TIMEMAP software and ECAI clearinghouse and metadata. Figure 6: Collective Distributed GIS, China TIMEMAP Interactive project. Figure 7: Interactive Web solutions Figure 8: Museum installations, International Dunhuang Project.

A key feature of the ECAI metadata clearinghouse is the recording of the definitions of the metadata elements in a central, Internet-accessible server database, rather than as hard coded values built into the software. This means that new elements, schemes and allowable values can be added simply by editing the database, and this extends to providing alternative versions of the metadata elements in different languages. Such flexibility can only be achieved by the use of an arbitrary set of element and scheme identifiers (in our case sequential numeric codes), not by the use of conventional metadata stored as a pre-defined set of textual tags. Flexibility was essential for an evolving system such as ECAI, with many international participants.

Drawing on the definitions stored in the database, our web-based software generates data entry forms with pull down lists wherever possible, automatic entry of common default values, online help and succinct examples. Metadata are verified for consistency before they are stored in the clearinghouse.

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providing an immediate online interactive mapping capability without installation of any

complex or expensive software on your web server. The Java map viewer is an intelligent

client which downloads vector and raster data and, in addition to zooming and panning etc,

can handle temporal filtering, data-driven hotlinks and access to distributed datasets

indexed by a central metadata clearinghouse. (Figure 7)

4. Museum installations

Preservation of cultural resources such as historical photos, maps, and records of

architectural heritage or urban history, TimeMap offers an exciting and low-cost solution

for managing and delivering and interpreting historical information, image portfolios and

museum collections through interactive multi-media kiosks and also through the Web.

TimeMap kiosk software allows users to navigate to particular parts of a map, choose a time

period of interest and click on points to see written accounts, census records, paintings or

other audio-visual information about that place at that particular time. Visitor kiosks could

be developed for specific archaeological or historic sites at any scale, and might incorporate

3D models and video as well as the detailed scholastic information about the site. The

interface can be readily customized to adopt a different layout, logos etc. for different

applications.(Figure 8)

In working with the project, we focused on Cairo, but the methodology could be applied to

other cities, archaeological sites, military campaigns or empires that have developed over time.

The aim is to provide a coordinated method of accessing information on the history and historical

archaeology of Cairo. The way that is done is by using a computerized map that changes over

time to show the changes in the growth of the city.

We used a geographic information system to take old maps of Cairo and re-digitalized

them, to align them with a modern map base. "Then you can look at the history of a piece of land

through time, for instance, the core of Cairo. The maps are a gateway to more detailed

information. For example, by clicking on an image of a building you can get pictures of the

building and other descriptive material for a particular date, or link to multimedia resources or a

Web site about the building. (Figure 9)

To our goals we adopted that, the urban future of these cities will be defined by their

capacity to generate process and distribute information. With the emergence of the Internet, the

diffusion of personal computers and the advent of telecommunications deregulation, cities face

unique requirements to compete as centers of urban, culture, and civic activity. Urban

Researchers must understand and explain the way in which our documented, preserve and

conserved heritage information can transform the future of cities and metropolitan areas where

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Figure 9: ICMC Project Source: Islamic Cities Historic Map Project © ICMC 1999-2001

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A. ICMC Project Website. B. Map Of Core Cairo 1800 C. Map Of Core Cairo 1806 D. Map Of Core Cairo 1842 E. Map Of Core Cairo 1874 F. Map Of Core Cairo 1888 Clearinghouse is intended to provide a one-stop shop for historical and cultural data of substance. It does this, not by collecting and storing data or indexing everything that exists, but by maintaining a controlled catalogue of on-line data held by other agencies or individuals, and enforcing data documentation standards through metadata

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Figure 10: ICMC Project Objectives Source: Islamic Cities Historic Map Project © ICMC 1999-2001/ Virtual Cairo, Alssyad, Nezar©IASTE.CED,UCB.

A. The ICMC ideological Hypothesis. B. Cairo 1549 MATTEO PAGANO, 1515-1588 C. Cairo 1572 Georg Braun And Frans Hogenberg D. HH E. Cairo 1685-87, Vaisseau Graviers d' Ortiees F. A Computer Generated Modeling to core

Cairo, Virtual Cairo, Alssayad Nezar, IASTE. The basic goal of cartographic animation is the depiction of change. The types of change can be categorized as temporal and non-temporal. Most cartographic animations depict change over time. Non-temporal cartographic animation are also possible. Examples include animations of data classification, data generalization, and a series of related variables from a single time period.

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E F

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people live and work. With this project, we hope to establish a new conceptual framework in

which to study and analyze of the heritage can lead to the patterns of urban change for these

cities.

Finally, the ICMC is designed to formulate new future indicators of urban activity, based

on the production, organization, and movement of Heritage information between and among

researchers. With information and telecommunications technologies transforming urban regions,

the project has an interdisciplinary team that brings together expertise in urban planning,

environmental science, engineering, computer science, anthropology, and public policy. The

project is based at Center of Middle Eastern Studies at UCB. It is conducted in collaboration with

the Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative at UCB and Cairo University, where they support the

project by conducting the ECAI/TIMEMAP methodology. This research promises to enhance

substantially our understanding of this important topic. (Figure 10)

References

1 Barras, Richard. (1987). Technical change and the urban development cycle. Urban Studies 24: 5-30 2 Acevedo, W and Masuoka, P. (1997) "Time-series animation techniques for visualizing urban growth." Computers

& Geosciences, 23 :423-435 3 Bell, C., Acevedo, W. and J.T. Buchanan. (1995) "Dynamic mapping of urban regions: Growth of the San

Francisco Sacramento region," Proceedings, Urban and Regional Information Systems Association, San Antonio, pp. 723-734. (Appendix 11.3)

4 Snow, D. 1997 GIS and Northern Iroquoian Demography. Archaeological Applications of GIS: Proceedings of Colloquium II, UISPP XIIIth Congress, Forli, Italy (September 1996). Sydney: Sydney University Archaeological Methods Series 5.

5 Spikins, P. 1997 Population Increase in the Mesolithic: A GIS Perspective. Archaeological Applications of GIS: Proceedings of Colloquium II, UISPP XIIIth Congress, Forli, Italy (September 1996). Sydney: Sydney University Archaeological Methods Series 5.

6 Yuan, M. 1996 Temporal GIS and spatial-temporal modeling. In Proceedings, Third International Conference/Workshop on Integrating GIS and Environmental Modeling, Santa Fe, NM, January 21-26, 1996. Santa Barbara, CA: National Center for Geographic Information and Analysis. (CD-ROM, also at

7 Johnson, I. (eds) Archaeological Applications of GIS: Proceedings of Colloquium II, UISPP XIIIth Congress, Forli, Italy (September 1996). Sydney: Sydney University Archaeological Methods Series 5.