Digital Community History
May 2010 - August 2010

Participants
Gary Priestnall
Mike Jackson
Adam Moore
Mark Paxton


Funding
Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute (Research Councils UK)

Project Overview
Digital Community History (DCH) is a pilot project within Horizon, a Digital Economy Research Institute at the University of Nottingham, funded by Research Councils UK, the University of Nottingham and over 40 academic and industrial partners. Horizon focuses on the role of ‘always on, always with you’ ubiquitous computing technology in the Digital Economy. One sub-theme is 'Creative Visiting', which aims to explore location-based mobile experiences, including the creation of personalised trails of history and culture. The DCH pilot aims to build a simple prototype which enables existing 'authored content' such as historical maps, photographs and census data to be explored in the field via a mobile device. The intention is that this will form a practical basis for discussion with potential users to identify a focus for the development of a history-based mobile visitor experience. Many of the challenges posed by historical data are common to geospatial information in general, and issues relating to the appropriate and effective use of geospatial data on mobile devices will be relevant to Horizon far beyond the confines of this pilot. This pilot will therefore comprise two linked activity areas, the first a review of the issues relating to the conflation and management of geo-referenced socio-cultural information over time and within the constraints imposed when used in conjunction with mobile devices, the second a prototype demonstrator using a Nottingham-based historical case study.

The review will summarise the research agenda relevant to aspects of geospatial data and positioning consider most important to the creation of mobile visitor guides which aim to integrate authored spatial data with volunteered geographic information. The broad areas of interest include; Positional accuracy; Data requirements and ‘geographic relevance’; Geospatial and Historical data conflation; and Representation issues.

The demonstrator will initially comprise a simple mobile historical mapper, featuring mechanisms to show user's location in the context of a range of backdrop historical map layers (below left) and georeferenced photographs (featuring a subset of the ‘Picture the Past’ database), below right. The image shows several photographs taken of the Trip to Jerusalem in Nottngham, visualised as virtual billboards reflecting the range of different locations from which they were taken. One aspect of this study will be to consider the various geocoding techniques that could be used to locate, and re-present, the photos, and the influence this has on the in-field experience.

In addition, data from the ‘Mapping Performance Culture 1857-1867’ project (AHRC-funded, PI Jo Robinson English) will be explored (below). This includes rich Point of Interest data for performance events during this period, and house level census data revealing the occupations of local residents.

Research Outcomes

Related Links
Horizon Digital Economy Research Institute