Integrating GIS and Semantic Web Technologies as a Next Step in the Evolution of Spatial Digital Humanities

Abstract

With the advent of information technology, numerous initiatives have been launched by cultural heritage, academic and commercial institutions aiming at digitization, organization, visualization and analysis of historical information of a given place. These projects usually utilize GIS (Geographic Information Systems) to represent and analyze a restricted range of spatial data, such as archaeological findings or landmarks from a single information source. To take the emerging field of spatial history to the next level—the spatial digital humanities—the traditional spatial data should be enriched with cultural and social data from heterogeneous resources, such as historical books, administrative documents, images, and multimedia objects, and allow for deeper analysis of the historical places’ cultural and social context. To this end, ontologies and modern semantic web technologies should be combined with GIS technology to enable easy data standardization and integration, uniform data modeling, open-access and cross-project data sharing and analysis. In this paper, we review this combined approach and its utilization attempts in recent spatial digital humanities projects for cities from all over the globe while discussing the field’s main common challenges and their possible solutions.