Friday 3 August 2012

Getting Closer to a Map Interface

We're continuing to get closer to a useful geographical interface for visualizing collections.  Using the AIM25-CALM service that Rory's created, we're able to call relevant collections based on time and latitude/longitude filters.  From the programming side, Rory created a test interface to experiment with what kind of data we would get with various calls to the service (fig 1).

[Fig 1]. Early tests of map showing collections returned from AIM25-CALM service.
One of the things that we've been experimenting with is the granularity, which defines how many levels of detail exist for a placename.  For instance: country/province/city/ or country/state/county/city/. These administrative districts vary by country, but helps us lower the signal to noise ratio. As you can see in Figure 2, the level 4 granularity returns more specific information in France than it does in the United Kingdom.

[Fig 2]. Experimenting with maximum granularity yields more results in France than the UK.  
As we move forward with this, we'll be further testing the returns of the service, and refining the user interface to integrate into the Historypin environment.