Project proposed for Maps and Timelines.

Sandy Arlinghaus

1. Create an online topographical and hydrological atlas of the Mediterranean land perimeter as a website

a. Use about 60 tiles from the Digital Chart of the World. The extent from which tiles are chosen is shown in Figure 1, below.

b. A sample tile is shown (Figure 2) that has used two of the dozen or so variables available for each tile.

i. Drainage net

ii. Elevation contours

c. ArcView was used to create a Triangulated Irregular Network (TIN) from the contours so that one might see clearly the relationship between drainage and topography (also shown in Figure 2).

d. To create a single digital file of the entire reach shown in Figure 1, it will be necessary to:

i. Open each of the 60 tiles individually and open the two variables for each tile and rename them. (In the Digital Chart of the World, all drainage layers have the same name, independent of tile number; that strategy is useful for some applications, but not for others (such as this one).)

ii. Merge, in ArcView, all 60 shape files for each of the two variables.

iii. Then, a TIN can be created for the entire Mediterranean land perimeter.

2. Use the results from 1 above as a backdrop for an historical map. The Ottoman Empire: The Classical Age 1300-1600, by Halil Inalcik, has a map showing the evolution of the Ottoman Empire from 1300 to 1600 (pages 24-25). It is a black and white line drawing.

a. Use the Inalcik map as a base map from which to create an animated view of spatial change over time: to watch the Empire change against the drainage and elevation backdrop. The spacing between successive frames of the animation will reflect the temporal spacing of spatial boundary change. Sounds suited to events causing change will punctuate the change. Actors and various related material will enter, as well.

b. Make each frame of the animation a clickable map to link to a timeline. Sources will include information already available on the web, as from the map library of the Perry Castaneda Library at the University of Texas at Austin, and from traditional documents, such as the Inalcik work.

c. Create clickable maps in which polygons link to the database (interactive maps). The Inalcik work shows towns on the paper map. These might be made clickable.

d. Explore the possibility of creating virtual reality from selected maps.

3. The final product might be useful to others and it might be a straightforward matter to integrate this work with that of others. It will be designed to fit into the web architecture for the course.

Figure 1. Labels on the map show the name of the tile in the Digital Chart of the World corresponding to that region. Two variables for the region QJ22 are suggested here: drainage and elevation.

Figure 2. A closer view of drainage and elevation for tile QJ22. The curled edges are formed when creating a TIN from the contours. Once adjacent tiles are merged, and THEN the TIN operation is performed, that effect will vanish (except at the edges of the set of merged tiles).