ArcView

project: Montréal l'avenir du passé (MAP)

Grant Holder:
Montréal l'avenir du passé (MAP) was established in 2000 to create an historical GIS research infrastructure for 19th and 20th century Montréal. We have digitized six highly detailed historical maps representing all buildings in the city for 1825, 1846, 1880, 1912, 1949 and 2000. The first three and last have been geo-referenced and we have successfully "peopled" them by linking at the street-scape (1846) or lot level (1880 & 2000) census returns, tax records, city directories and a wide variety of non-routinely generated sources. [read more]

tool: ArcView

Purpose: 

A software application for creating, manipulating and analysing GIS (Geographic Information System) data. ArcView may be used to create geographic maps, manipulate spatial features, analyse attributes and characteristics, and visualise spatial information in an understandable form. Current versions of the software enable the user to import and manipulate several content types in a spatial environment, including demographic information, CAD designs, still images and other types of content.

Features: 

• Integrated query-building functionality to interrogate a dataset in order to answer research questions. For example, distance measurement, feature location
• Availability of map templates to create a consistent layout and appearance.
• Plug-in support that allows use of first-party and third-party extensions to perform tasks unsupported in the base installation of the software. E.g. raster geo-processing and three-dimensional analysis.

A&H use case 1 description: 
‘Predicting the location of hominid sites in Africa and Asia’ project has used the software to geo-reference a dataset of locations in Africa and Asia, in order to assess the relationship between bone collagen preservation and geographic location of archaeological sites.
Publisher: 
ESRI (Environmental Systems Research Institute)
Data analysis: 
Spatial data analysis
Specifications: 
Surfer (ASCII & binary) data format
JPEG
Windows Enhanced MetaFile (EMF)
Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG)
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS)
Portable Document Format (PDF)
Tagged Image File Format (TIFF)
Portable Network Graphics (PNG)
Graphics Interchange Format (GIF)
Bitmap (BMP)
ESRI Digital Elevation Model (DEM)
polyline
polygon
floating GRID
Adobe Illustrator (AI)
Software/programming languages used: 
ArcView
Suite: 
ArchGIS
Data capture: 
Geophysical survey
GPS and total station surveys
Tags: 
GIS
Data structuring and enhancement: 
Geo-referencing and projection
Licence: 
commercial
lifecycleStage: 
creation
structuring
analysis
publishing
Platform: 
Microsoft Windows
By Valentina Asciutti at Wed, 20/01/2010 - 11:47

project: Predicting the location of hominid sites in Africa and Asia

Grant Holder: Matthew Collins, Kathryn Holmes, Katharine Robson Brown
Early human archaeological and fossil sites are known in Africa from about 6 million years ago, and in Asia from about 1.8 million years ago. The distribution of these sites in time and space is very patchy, and while this situation may in part be the result of the practical difficulties of working in these regions, it is also likely that given the variables of geomorphology, climate and vegetation, sites in which hominin, faunal, archaeological or environmental information is preserved may not be distributed uniformly across the landscape. [read more]