Reading and visualizing geo annotated data

Date: Thursday, June 29, 2017, 17h00-18h15 (CEST time)

Session coordinators: Chiara Palladino (University of Leipzig/University of Bari), Valeria Vitale (Institute of Classical Studies), and Marcel Mernitz (University of Leipzig)

YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3C3dIRo57Gk

Slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1mnr9CyDHJVITu4twKIOmQoqjsf93kfzkvtaPbE506hQ/edit?usp=sharing

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Summary

The session aims to give an overview on the tools and applications for the visualization of spatial data retrieved from textual annotations. We will briefly recall the process of Geo-Annotation from the previous session (https://github.com/SunoikisisDC/SunoikisisDC-2016-2017/wiki/Geo-annotation), and show the first immediate visualization of the annotations on the map provided by Recogito, its functions and the type of research that can be performed through it. Then, we will show the various export options for further research and illustrate how to use them in separate GIS-applications: we will especially focus on QGIS, but will also give a general outline of Carto.com and a list of further tools of similar usage. The session will also give an outlook at further applications based on geo-annotated resources and Linked Open Data, and discuss how Geo-Data are combined through LOD technologies, enabling map-based research across several resources, databases, texts. To show how this can be achieved, we will present the in-development tool Peripleo.

Outline

• Introduction: Overview of past session on Geo-Annotation
• Geo-Annotation applied to a concrete case: how to visualize the Recogito Map on the Athenian Tribute Lists
• Various geo-data formats: KML, GeoJSON, CSV.
• LOD Applications from Geo-Annotated data: Peripleo
• QGIS Tutorial and applications for visualizing geo-annotated texts
• Overview on further applications: Carto.com *Exercise and questions

Required readings

• Kenneth E. Foote, Shannon Crum, and Natalia Vorotyntseva, "Cartographic Communication", The Geographer's Craft, 1995 (with subsequent revisions). Esp. the following sections: The Value of Maps; Cartography as Communication; What Is a Good Map?; Basic Elements of Map Composition; The Cartographer's Palette: The Semiotics of Cartography
• Kenneth E. Foote and Donald J. Huebner, 'Error, Accuracy, and Precision', The Geographer’s Craft, 1995 (with subsequent revisions).
• “A gentle GIS introduction”: http://docs.qgis.org/2.14/en/docs/gentle_gis_introduction/

Further readings

• QGIS Tutorial and documentation: http://www.qgis.org/en/docs/index.html

Further references

If you are interested in finding a more suitable application for your particular research purposes or project, try one of the following. All of these applications are essentially open source (some of them have licensed additional features), and require different skill sets (e.g. javascript, familiarity with various geodata formats, etc.). Except for Google Earth and Neatline, which you can download on your computer or server, all of these are web-based applications.

• QGIS (http://www.qgis.org/)
• Peripleo: (link to the new, development version of Peripleo: http://peripleo.no5.at/ This version of the application has not been officially released yet and it may be unstable. The previous, more stable, version of Peripleo can be still found at http://pelagios.org/peripleo/map)
• MapBox (https://www.mapbox.com/)
• Google Earth (https://www.google.com/earth/download)
• Leaflet (http://leafletjs.com/)
• Carto.com (https://carto.com/)
• Antiquity à la Carte (http://awmc.unc.edu/wordpress/alacarte/)
• Storymaps (https://storymaps.arcgis.com/en/)
• Neatline (http://docs.neatline.org/)

Other resources

• Roundup of Resources on Ancient Geography on AWOL (the Ancient World OnLine): http://ancientworldonline.blogspot.it/2012/09/roundup-of-resources-on-ancient.html
• A short vademecum of scary DH-words (including KML, CSV, GeoJSON, and various GIS definitions): http://commons.pelagios.org/groups/pedagogy-working-group/forum/topic/its-here-scary-dh-words-vademecum-add-and-comment/
• Pelagios Commons Community: for any difficulty you should have, there is a community to help you http://commons.pelagios.org/community/

Exercise: Representing a dataset on QGIS

(This tutorial is intended to give a flavour of the potential of Recogito download data within a GIS system. It is not intended to be exhaustive or specific to QGIS.)

For this project, you can either use your own annotations on Recogito or choose one of these predefined datasets:

• List of Roman amphitheatres and their locations, compiled by Sebastian Heath. https://github.com/sfsheath/roman-amphitheaters/blob/master/roman-amphitheaters.csv (CSV format)

• Mapping Spartacus: https://pleiades.stoa.org/news/blog/mapping-spartacus (KML format)

• Itinerarium Antonini on Trismegistos: http://www.trismegistos.org/geo/georef_list_fullview.php?referral_page=authors_allgeoref_list&tm=215&order= (CSV format)

• Preparation:

1. If necessary, download and install QGIS
2. Download your chosen CSV or KML file
3. Within QGIS, activate the OpenLayers and Qgis2threejs plugins and ensure they are up to date.
4. Add base layer:
5. Create a New Project in QGIS. (Project | New )
6. Change the canvas unit to metres (Project | Project Properties…)
7. Add an aerial base layer map (Web | OpenLayers plugin | Layer map of your choice, e.g. Google Satellite)

• Load data:

1. Add a csv file to the project (Layer | Add Delimited Text Layer…)
2. Select the file and ensure the delimiters are set correctly. Recogito files generally have ; (semi-column) set as delimiter, so remember to set it correctly; if you are using Trismegistos file, they have tabular (tab) delimiters instead.
3. The first line in the preview should have field names and the x and y values should represent longitude (E-W) and latitude (N-S) respectively.
4. Select EPSG:4326 CRS system. You should now see the places on the map.
5. If you chose a KML file, remember to select the format properly in the window and follow the rest of the instructions.

• Symbolize the data.

1. Double-click the layer (or right-click| properties)
2. In the Labels tab select Label this Layer with, and select the toponym field
3. In the Style tab, change the Single Symbol drop down menu to Categorized.
4. Under Column select any feature of your interest. For example, if you are working on the Roman Amphitheaters, select “type”; later on, you can add other features, such as “province”, or “chronogrp” (chronological group), etc.
5. Click Classify. You will now see that each kind of feature has been assigned a color. QGIS cannot separate out features so you will need to color-code multiple entries the same, or you can use filtering to create individual layers for each type of feature.
6. Choose an individual feature class and change it by double-clicking on the symbol or selecting change. You can change multiple features at once.
7. Try representing different categories in different styles. Experiment with different combinations of colour and shape.
8. Visualize the results. How do they contribute to your understanding of the data?