Do you know of any existing open-source tools that can handle the layered visualization of historic data on maps and the visualization of that data over time? Like, extract data out of a relational database and layered to create different visualizations. Or something like this?
Open-source historical GIS tools
(8 posts) (6 voices)-
Posted 6 years ago Permalink
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Wayne Graham
MemberBest AnswerThe tools we've used to do this type of visualization are Geoserver (http://geoserver.org/display/GEOS/Welcome) with OpenLayers (http://openlayers.org/). Using these tools, the prototype of the Newberry Library's Historical County Boundaries took an afternoon; the finished product can be seen at http://www.lib.virginia.edu/scholarslab/resources/counties/
The system is also capable of layering historic maps (see http://gis.lib.virginia.edu/search?q=mcgregor), also then providing different export features like PDF and Google Earth's KMZ.
I could envision the use of OpenLayers, Geoserver, and something like Google's Visualization API (http://code.google.com/apis/visualization/documentation/gallery.html), JS InfoVis (http://thejit.org/), Protovis (http://vis.stanford.edu/protovis/), or any number of other excellent data visualization tools to build a really interesting visualization tool.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Joe Gilbert
AdminReplying to @dot.porter's post:
Just to say a bit more about the Newberry Historical County Boundaries example, thanks to Geoserver we are able, using OpenLayers, to apply filters written in the simple CQL syntax to the datasets (which contain all boundaries for state) in order to restrict the information presented by a user-specified date.
This may not be useful out of context, but changing the map can be as simple as:
counties.mergeNewParams({ 'cql_filter': 'START_N <= ' + user_date + ' and END_N >= ' + user_date, 'layers': state_list, 'styles': style_list });
With the values for date, states displayed, and map style determined by the user's selections. Note that START_N and END_N are values specific to the Newberry datasets.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Dot, this is a (free) hosted service and not a piece of open source software you can own and control, but -- depending on your needs, you might be interested in GeoCommons.
This is a project of Andrew Turner at FortiusOne. Andrew was on the faculty of our NEH-sponsored Institute for Enabling Geospatial Scholarship (and is therefore a friend of DH!).
They've just improved and extended GeoCommons and added the ability to process and animate data with temporal as well as spatial and statistical dimensions. There's a blog post about the update.
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Dot,
VisualEyes will do this kind of thing.
It is Flash-based, but you can host the SWF file anywhere:Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
THanks for all the suggestions. I thought I was following this question but didn't receive any updates... so apologies for taking a while to come back to say thank you!
Posted 6 years ago Permalink -
Not sure if this is exactly what you're looking for but LookBackMaps.net might be worth a shot too. NYPL has done a similar project, not sure what its built on - http://maps.nypl.org/warper/
Posted 5 years ago Permalink -
NYPL's warper is pretty cool. It's an implementation of a Rails-based application called Map Warper (http://warper.geothings.net/) and provides a Ruby wrapper around a cgi program called Mapserver. It's not very evident, but the developer has posted the code on github (https://github.com/timwaters/mapwarper).
Posted 5 years ago Permalink
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