Applying historical GIS beyond the academy: four use cases for the Great Britain HGIS
Total funding for the Great Britain Historical GIS now totals over $US 3.5m., but obtaining this funding required us to demonstrate that the results would benefit an audience beyond academic history. This chapter describes how we have worked with four other groups to meet their needs: health researchers, archivists, government environmental agencies and companies selling advice to the property sector. The main focus is on the reasons for the collaboration, with details of the actual research provided mainly via references. The case studies presented here are of course all drawn from the experience of one project, but that experience is quite diverse, and each case study ends with some more general lessons.
Rebuilding the Great Britain Historical GIS, Part 1: Building an Indefinitely Scalable Statistical Database
Abstract The Great Britain Historical Geographical Information System (GIS) has been rebuilt around a single central table holding all statistics in one column, currently containing 14,541,491 data values. This architecture enables extremely flexible data handling, but requires that the context of each data value be captured entirely as metadata. Statistical reporting areas are defined via an ontology of administrative units, in which hierarchical relationships are compulsory while boundary polygons are optional. What a number measures is recorded via a relational implementation of the Data Documentation Initiative standard, locating each value within an n-dimensional matrix, or nCube, whose dimensions are variables such as age, gender, and occupation. The data library can be extended to additional countries or more statistical topics without adding any database tables.
The Colours and Dresses of Racism in America
The monograph argues that American racism has two colours (white and black), not one; and that each racism dresses itself not in one clothing, but in four: (1) “Minimal” negative, when one race considers another race inferior to itself in degree, but not in nature; (2) “Maximal” negative, when one race regards another as inherently inferior; (3) “Minimal” positive, when one race elevates another race to a superior status in degree, but not in nature; and (4) “Maximal” positive, when one race believes that the other race is genetically superior. The monograph maintains that the needs of capitalism created black slavery; that black slavery produced white racism as a justification for black slavery; and that black racism is a backlash of white racism. The monograph concludes that the abolition of black slavery and the civil rights movement destroyed the social and political ground for white and black racism, while the modern development of capitalism is demolishing their economic and intellectual ground.