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| Google preserves historical maps in 3D |
Google hopes to be able to save historical maps in 3D through Kartta Labs, an open-source, extensible system in Google Cloud and Kubernetes that can be used to reconstruct past cities' shapes from historical maps and images.
The Carta Labs system can be used as a suite of tools to create explorable time series charts that allow users to enter data with historically valid information.
The Carta Labs system was first introduced at the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence last year to uncover geographical knowledge.
According to the creator, the motivation behind this is to streamline the map of world history while making it easy to use.
Historical maps help identify cultural and social trends and are a valuable resource for research, planning and citizen empowerment.
More than a decade ago, former Vice President Al Gore used historical images from Google Earth to show the melting of polar ice caps.
The digital archive has also done other work related to collecting historical maps, but the Carta Labs system doesn't just collect data to record spatiotemporal maps.
The temporary map server shows map changes over time, and the Crowd Gathering Platform allows users to download historical maps of cities and match them to real-world coordinates.
Another platform that works on the map to use artificial intelligence to create a 3D experience and to rebuild buildings.
The Warper web app allows users to geotag downloaded images by finding points on historical maps and corresponding points on the base map.
Once the user downloads the map, the wrapper will be better able to guess the geographical location of the map by extracting text information from the map.
This initial estimate is used to roughly place the map in place and to allow the user to geo-tag the pixels on the map.
After manually placing control points on history and reference maps, the app uses geotagged points to adjust the image to fit the reference map well.
The editor is integrated into (Warper) so that the tool supports time dimension and integrates with other applications in the Carta Labs system so that users can download historical maps and geo-specific features.
The Carta Labs system on the front of the timecard describes directional labels that users can use to navigate historical maps in time and space.
The Carta Labs frontend works the same as Google Maps but has a timeline slider for identifying the map of the year. Moving the time slider can see how the elements on the map have changed over time.
According to Google, "3D models" can reconstruct the full and detailed 3D structure of historic buildings, link images with map data, and organize these 3D models in a repository and display them on a map.
Google said: We hope the Carta Labs system will become a link between the developer community, card enthusiasts and casual users. Our historical data sets and our open source code are used here.