Category Archives: london

GeoBusiness 2014 – a preview

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GeoBusiness_smallGeoBusiness 2014 is less than a week away.  This is a new event and I am looking forward to seeing what it will be like.  The organisers have certainly pushed the event, with short magazine inserts listing who is exhibiting and presenting.  GoGeo will be there and i thought i would explain why we are attending and what we hope to get out of the event.

It’s new and it’s big

Pretty self-explanatory, but also significant.  This is a chance to speak to all the major software vendors and find out what enhancements they have in the development.  In addition, there are a host of companies that offer GI service.  I want to see what these are up to and report on what looks innovative and interesting.  These companies collectively employ a significant number of GIS graduates each year.  Many of them are exploiting new and emerging technology such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV).  As such, they are really quite dynamic places to be employed as a fresh-faced graduate.

Workshops

There are a number of interesting workshops being run by companies to highlight what innovative analysis they are doing. There seems to be a clusters of workshops around 3D laser scanning, UAV’s and Business Information Modeling (BIM).  There is also a strand that focuses on professional development.

Content

Content for GoGeo and perhaps even ShareGeo.  So that means news articles, blog posts and so on for  GoGeo.  With ShareGeo it would be great to get some sample data from some companies so that lecturers could use this in their lessons.  I will be looking to convince some of the UAV and scanning companies to give some data with ShareGeo.  If you don’t know what ShareGeo is, it is a repository for open geo-spatial data that enhances teaching, learning and research.

So if you already have a ticket I might see you there. If you don’t have a ticket, there is still time and there are special rates for students (£25 per day if you pre-book).  Students, do your research on the companies attending and speak to people to find out what they do, it is a great opportunity to see the diverse range of jobs that is available in the GI market.

Geobusiness 2014 website

Digging for Data in Archives

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Since our last post the Trading Consequences team have been working with our identified and potential data providers to begin gathering digital data for the project.

As the various data providers were sending us millions of pages of text from digitized historical documents, I flew over to London to spend some time in the archives.

A major component of our Digging Into Data project will involve doing traditional historical research, in archives and using the digitized repositories, to provide a comparison between what the historians are able to find and what the data mining and visualization components discover. So I set about researching a few of the more interesting commodities flowing into London industry during the nineteenth century. This included archival records related to the palm oil trade in west Africa and records at Kew Gardens’ archives related to John Eliot Howard’s scientific investigations into cinchona and quinine. John Eliot was one of the “Sons” in Howard & Sons, who manufactured chemicals and drugs in Startford (near the site of the 2012 Olympics) throughout the nineteenth century. After photographing most of his papers at Kew, I also spent time at the London Metropolitan Archive, looking through the company records. It was at the LMA that I was reminded about the disappointments often associated with historical research. It turned out the single most interesting document listed in the archival holdings, a ledger listing the imports of cinchona bark throughout the middle of the century, had been destroyed at some point and a second document on their trade with plantations in Java is missing.

After collecting enough material to begin my study of the relationships between factories in the Thames Estuary and commodity frontiers in South America, Africa and India, I focused my final day in the archive on a set of sources that will directly assist with the data mining aspects of the project. I recorded four years of customs ledgers, which record the quantity, declared value and country of origin of the hundreds of different commodity categories imported into Britain (everything from live animals to works of art). This source will provide the foundation of the taxonomy of commodities that we will create over the next few months, which will then be used to mine the data. Moreover, these ledgers provide a good starting point for our research into Canada’s trade with Britain and we are recording the quantity and value of all the goods shipped across the Atlantic. Just in through the monotonous process of photographing a few thousand pages, the major changes between the early and late nineteenth century began to stand out. Not only were there a lot more commodities by the centuries’ end, but Britain was relying on far more countries to supply it with raw materials.

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Programme Now Available for Geospatial in the Cultural Heritage Domain – Past, Present & Future

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We are delighted to announce our final programme for the Geospatial in the Cultural Heritage Domain, Past, Present & Future (#geocult) event which takes place next week, Wednesday 7th March 2012, at the Maughan Library, Kings College London.

A fantastic programme of speakers will explore the use of geospatial data and tools in cultural heritage projects with breakout discussions and unconference sessions providing opportunity for networking and further discussion of this exciting area.

We are delighted to announce that our speakers for the day will include:

Humphrey Southall of the University of Portsmouth will talk about OldMaps online, which just launched today at the Locating the Past (#geopast) event in London.

Stuart Dunn from Kings College London, talking about the new Digital Exposures of English Place Names (DEEP) project which is building a gazeteer that tracks the changing nature of place names.

Chris Fleet of the National Library of Scotland, and co-author of Scotland: Mapping a Nation, will talk about recent developments at the NLS.

Claire Grover of University of Edinburgh will talk about the new Digging Into Data project Trading Consequences which will use data mining techniques to investigate the economic and environment impact of 19th century trading.

Natalie Pollecutt from the Wellcome Library will be talking about their project: Medical Officers of Health (MOH) Reports for London 1848-1972 which is building a free online data set on public health in London.

Michael Charno, Digital Archivist and web developer at the Archaeology Data Service, will talk about Grey Literature and spatial technologies.

Stuart Nicol of the University of Edinburgh will talk about Visualising Urban Geographies, a recent project to create geospatial tools for historians.

Jamie McLauglin from the University of Sheffield will talk about Locating Londons Past, a website which allows you to search digital resources on early modern and eighteenth-century London, and to map the results.

Stuart Macdonald of University of Edinburgh will talk about AddressingHistory, a website and crowdsourcing project to geospatially reference historical post office directory data.

Sam Griffiths of University College London, will talk about “Classifying historical business directory data: issues of translation between geographical and ethnographic contributions to a community PPGIS (Public Participation GIS) project�.

Kate Jones of the University of Portsmouth will talk about Stepping Into Time, a project to bring World War Two bomb damage maps into the real world by using web and mobile mapping technology.

We will also be welcoming Rebekkah Abraham and Michael Daley from We Are What We Do to talk about HistoryPin, a website and mobile app which enables you to browse and add historical images to a map of the world, exploring the past through georeferenced photographs.

The detailed programme for the day can be found on our Eventbrite page where you can also book your free place at this event. Bookings close on Friday 2nd March 2012 so book soon!

We will also be live blogging, tweeting and recording this event so do also keep an eye on the blog here, the #geocult hashtag, and on our Geospatial in the Cultural Heritage Domain – Past, Present & Future page where you will be able to access materials after the event.

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Upcoming Event: “Geospatialâ€� in the Cultural Heritage domain, past, present and future

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We are very excited to announce that bookings are now open for the next JISC GECO workshop!

“Geospatial” in the  Cultural Heritage domain, past, present and future (#geocult) , taking place on Wednesday 7th March 2012 in London,  will be an opportunity to explore how digitised cultural heritage content can be exploited through geographical approaches and the types of tools and techniques that can be used with geo-referenced/geotagged content.

Issues we are keen to discuss include selection of maps/materials, issues of accuracy and precision, staff and technical requirements, sustainability, licensing.

The event will take place at Maughan Library, Chancery Lane, part of Kings College London. We are most grateful to the lovely people at the KCL Centre for e-Research for securing us this super location.

Library Entrance by Flickr User maccath / Katy Ereira

Library Entrance by Flickr User maccath / Katy Ereira

We are currently confirming the last few speakers and titles for talks so will post something here on the blog once the programme is finalised.

We already have a great draft schedule and some fantastic speakers confirmed so this promises to be a fascinating and stimulating day of talks and breakout sessions.

As we are sharing details of this event at pretty short notice we would be particularly grateful if you could book your place as soon as possible and please do tell your colleagues and friends who may be interested!

Book your free place now via our Eventbrite page:  http://geocult.eventbrite.com/

If you would like to propose any additional talks or ask any questions about the event please email the JISC GECO team via:  edina@ed.ac.uk.


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Guest Blog Post: SPIRES Network Technological Spaces Event

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We have a short guest blog post this week from Mòrag Burgon-Lyon of SPIRES who have an event coming up in October that should be of interest to those using AddressingHistory.

SPIRES is a network for researchers, young, old and somewhere in between, in academia, industry and leisure.  They run seminars and workshops, provide travel funding for these and other events, promote discussion and generally support members in any way they can. Anyone can join SPIRES (it’s free!) and you can find out more about how to do this on their about page.

The SPIRES (Supporting People who Investigate Research Environments and Spaces) network would like to invite some leisure researchers to join our next workshop on Technological Spaces at City University, London on 7th October.  We aim to get people together from academia, industry and leisure research for networking, and to better understand the physical, social and digital environments in which research is conducted.

The day will comprise short talks of around 15 minutes on various topics, discussion sessions and group activities.  Confirmed talks include a digital curator from the British Library about the Growing Knowledge exhibition and some academic projects on digital tools including SerenA (a Serendipity Arena) and Brain (Building Research and Innovation Networks).  More talks are in the pipeline from academic and industry speakers.

If you would like to present a short talk about your research, and the tools (digital and otherwise) you use, we would love to hear from you!  If you would rather not present a talk, but would still like to attend the workshop, or just join the SPIRES network (it is free, and there are lots of benefits) please get in touch.  Assistance with travel costs is available for workshop attendees, (though please check with me before booking travel) and lunch will be provided.  Contact @SPIRES13 on Twitter, or email m.burgon-lyon@hw.ac.uk.  Further information is also available on our website http://www.spires.info