osm

A talk titled "Open Historical Map : Re-using outdated information" will be presented by David Evans at the State of the Map conference in Birmingham this Friday at 14:20 GMT. The talk is about the Open Historical Map, an offshot of the Open Street Map, that concerns itself with historical GIS information.

The First World War took many by surprise. The speed of the German advance and the expectation of a short war meant that no large scale maps of mainland Europe were available. Another problem with war preparation in that era is that mapping another country was a certain sign of impending invasion, to the point that official surveyors would sometimes get arrested by the local authorities for spying.