Martina De Moor
Ghent University, Belgium

Abstract:

The presentation to be held in Shanghai is part of a “sequel”, which started with presentations in Florence and Berkeley 2000. The full title of the project which will be presented is “the historical GIS of the Belgian territorial structure”. The project aims at providing a service for (academic and non-academic) researchers, teachers and the public service in order to enable them to create thematic maps of the Belgian territorial structure since the end of the Ancien Régime until the 1960s and eventually till present day. It is the continuation of a project that focussed on the collection of geometric data (mainly community borders) and attribute data (data on the administrative units and statistical data on population, agriculture, industry,...) for the period 1796-1963. There was however no way to access these data easily. From mid 2002 onwards, it will be possible to access the data via the web and add other data and make maps. We hope this project can be the first step to a historical data archive for Belgium as well. The presentation will focus on the (mainly technical) choices we have made and will have to make in order convert the former structure of the data into a well-structured GIS.

Related URL: Mapping Historical Boundaries - Bio Page

International Workshop on Historical GIS Fudan University, Shanghai, August 23-25, 2001