Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.

A great deal of information is contained within archival maps-ranging from historic political boundaries, to mineral resources, to the locations of cultural landmarks. There are many ongoing efforts to preserve and digitize historic maps so that the information contained within them can be stored an...

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Autores principales: Karim Bahgat, Dan Runfola
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Publicado: Public Library of Science (PLoS) 2021
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Acceso en línea:https://doaj.org/article/94a8de3d67fa476cae07c16ba0a0eca0
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spelling oai:doaj.org-article:94a8de3d67fa476cae07c16ba0a0eca02021-12-02T20:12:45ZToponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.1932-620310.1371/journal.pone.0260039https://doaj.org/article/94a8de3d67fa476cae07c16ba0a0eca02021-01-01T00:00:00Zhttps://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0260039https://doaj.org/toc/1932-6203A great deal of information is contained within archival maps-ranging from historic political boundaries, to mineral resources, to the locations of cultural landmarks. There are many ongoing efforts to preserve and digitize historic maps so that the information contained within them can be stored and analyzed efficiently. A major barrier to such map digitizing efforts is that the geographic location of each map is typically unknown and must be determined through an often slow and manual process known as georeferencing. To mitigate the time costs associated with the georeferencing process, this paper introduces a fully automated method based on map toponym (place name) labels. It is the first study to demonstrate these methods across a wide range of both simulated and real-world maps. We find that toponym-based georeferencing is sufficiently accurate to be used for data extraction purposes in nearly half of all cases. We make our implementation available to the wider research community through fully open-source replication code, as well as an online georeferencing tool, and highlight areas of improvement for future research. It is hoped that the practical implications of this research will allow for larger and more efficient processing and digitizing of map information for researchers, institutions, and the general public.Karim BahgatDan RunfolaPublic Library of Science (PLoS)articleMedicineRScienceQENPLoS ONE, Vol 16, Iss 11, p e0260039 (2021)
institution DOAJ
collection DOAJ
language EN
topic Medicine
R
Science
Q
spellingShingle Medicine
R
Science
Q
Karim Bahgat
Dan Runfola
Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
description A great deal of information is contained within archival maps-ranging from historic political boundaries, to mineral resources, to the locations of cultural landmarks. There are many ongoing efforts to preserve and digitize historic maps so that the information contained within them can be stored and analyzed efficiently. A major barrier to such map digitizing efforts is that the geographic location of each map is typically unknown and must be determined through an often slow and manual process known as georeferencing. To mitigate the time costs associated with the georeferencing process, this paper introduces a fully automated method based on map toponym (place name) labels. It is the first study to demonstrate these methods across a wide range of both simulated and real-world maps. We find that toponym-based georeferencing is sufficiently accurate to be used for data extraction purposes in nearly half of all cases. We make our implementation available to the wider research community through fully open-source replication code, as well as an online georeferencing tool, and highlight areas of improvement for future research. It is hoped that the practical implications of this research will allow for larger and more efficient processing and digitizing of map information for researchers, institutions, and the general public.
format article
author Karim Bahgat
Dan Runfola
author_facet Karim Bahgat
Dan Runfola
author_sort Karim Bahgat
title Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
title_short Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
title_full Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
title_fullStr Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
title_full_unstemmed Toponym-assisted map georeferencing: Evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
title_sort toponym-assisted map georeferencing: evaluating the use of toponyms for the digitization of map collections.
publisher Public Library of Science (PLoS)
publishDate 2021
url https://doaj.org/article/94a8de3d67fa476cae07c16ba0a0eca0
work_keys_str_mv AT karimbahgat toponymassistedmapgeoreferencingevaluatingtheuseoftoponymsforthedigitizationofmapcollections
AT danrunfola toponymassistedmapgeoreferencingevaluatingtheuseoftoponymsforthedigitizationofmapcollections
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