How Map Warper has changed the research landscape: Part three

In the last of our three-part series about Public Record Office Victoria’s (PROV) Map Warper, we continue to explore the magic of the Map Warper tool. This time we go behind the scenes of the technology.

Conal Tuohy is an independent technical developer who developed our Provisualizer and Photowall tools. He specialises in digital humanities and is interested in apps like Map Warper for his own research. He says that Map Warper is an example of how new applications can make archival records more accessible using open government standards.  

“Open standards around web services and access to the raw data that drives those services like Map Warper is critical to ensuring researchers can find what they are after easily and for developers to build services on top of existing services to help improve them or widen their reach.”

Here, we explore some of the information and technology standards involved in Map Warper.
 

Crowdsourcing

Map Warper’s historic maps are rectified, or placed over the present day, by PROV volunteers and public researchers who have signed up to the service (you can sign up too!). These users match up points on the historic map image with identical points on the contemporary map of the world and these pixels are turned into latitude/longitude values. Conal says that:

“As far as I know it’s the first of it’s kind for a government archive in the southern hemisphere and an incredible crowdsourcing tool to makes maps easier to find.”

This is why we call it our first geospatial crowd sourcing service.
 

Geospatial data standards

Geospatial data standards allow the maps and their data (including latitude and longitude) to be exported in and out of the application itself for use by researchers, technologists and map enthusiasts. As a result, we have exported 12,000 maps from Map Warper  to the Digital Twin Victoria website, adding to their comprehensive digital model of Victoria. The Digital Twin platform gives government, industry, research groups and the community more power to compare, analyse and share information about our built and natural environment than ever before.
 

Public API

Map Warper’s Application Programming Interface (API) allows programmatic access to the Map Warper maps and data for the development of other applications such as mobile apps. 
 

Get started on Map Warper

If you haven’t already created a free account, visit mapwarper.prov.vic.gov.au and enjoy helping others and the archives rectify thousands of historic maps for future research!