OpenHistoricalMap + MapReader
Open Source Geospatial Components toward Automated Data Integration
OpenHistoricalMap is the archival counterpart to OpenStreetMap, an open data platform for mapping world geography over time that is built on the OSM data model and uses forked components of the OSM ecosystem. It is a collaborative, global effort, but one thing it lacks is a comprehensive and standards-based approach for adding data extracted from scanned historical maps. This effort will focus on MapReader, an open source, UK-based humanities research software library that implements text spotting models to extract text and coordinates from georeferenced historical maps. We will enhance MapReader's input capabilities to better handle IIIF sources georeferenced via Allmaps, will synchronize its output with OHM's tagging schema, and use MapRoulette to implement a staging mechanism for human review. The goal of this project is not only to create a new contribution pipeline for OHM, but to enrich an existing software ecosystem and lay a foundation for future work in these themes.
- The project's own website: https://www.openhistoricalmap.org/
Run by Legion GIS, LLC
This project was funded through the NGI0 Commons Fund, a fund established by NLnet with financial support from the European Commission's Next Generation Internet programme, under the aegis of DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology under grant agreement No 101135429. Additional funding is made available by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SERI).
