Crowdsourcing the georeferencing of historical pictures

Authors

Timothée Produit, University of Applied Sciences and Arts Western SwitzerlandFollow
Nicolas Blanc, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western SwitzerlandFollow
Sarah Composto, HEIG-VD / INSIT, University of Applied Sciences Western SwitzerlandFollow
Jens Ingensand, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western SwitzerlandFollow
Loic Furhoff, University of Applied Sciences and Arts, Western SwitzerlandFollow

Abstract

Countless organizations own archive pictures which are not used due to the difficulty of localizing them. Only the participation of volunteers can help to identify the image content. Through an accessible web interface called smapshot, citizens are able to georeference historical images without any prior specific competence. To avoid the volunteers to face the complexity of 3D digitization and navigation, we implemented a state of the art photogrammetry camera orientation algorithm in the platform. Currently several thousand images from all around Switzerland have been georeferenced by the crowd. At this time the tool is mainly used by the population for the visualization experience and the nostalgia behind it. The ambition is to support scientists to analyze landscape evolution.

DOI

https://doi.org/10.7275/awa4-4w48

Recommended Citation

Produit, Timothée; Blanc, Nicolas; Composto, Sarah; Ingensand, Jens; and Furhoff, Loic (2018) "Crowdsourcing the georeferencing of historical pictures," Free and Open Source Software for Geospatial (FOSS4G) Conference Proceedings: Vol. 18, Article 6.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.7275/awa4-4w48
Available at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/foss4g/vol18/iss1/6