Thanks to funding from the Minister of Education and Science, a Digital History of the City of Białystok will be created. The project, worth PLN 896,810, is funded under the Science for Society programme.
Every city has its own history and identity, preserved in the memory of its inhabitants, in its buildings and street network, but also in conservation records and in historical and popular works. In this project we aim to create a unique spatial database that brings together in one place all the available information on Białystok of the kinds listed above.
The project uses historical maps from the 18th and 19th centuries, on the basis of which we are producing a digital plan of the city using a geographic information system (GIS). Every user of the website will be able to see the former layout of the city at specific points in time (e.g. 1799, 1810, 1826) – with every building and plot delineated spatially and graphically and linked to a database containing information about that location. Clicking on a given feature will display a range of information on the inhabitants of individual houses (in the 18th and 19th centuries), surviving plans and drawings, as well as links to publications about that place. As a result, anyone interested in the city's past will be able to use a website presenting a spatial visualisation of the city together with near-complete material on its history in the 18th and early 19th centuries.
Geographic information systems (GIS) will make it possible to produce the appropriate maps (vector layers in GIS software). Each urban plot will then be outlined so that it can be represented in the database by a feature with a unique identifier. This will allow all information obtained from other historical sources to be linked to a location in space (a plot). GIS offers far broader analytical possibilities, going well beyond map-making and simple visualisation. Instead of showing the spatial distribution of a single variable, it will be possible to analyse the layout of the city taking into account many different kinds of variables, including qualitative ones, and even data calculated by the software, such as plot area. Geostatistical methods make it possible to study phenomena that are often invisible to the “naked eye”.
Project value: PLN 896,810
The project is led by dr hab. Karol Łopatecki, prof. UwB
