1. Generating Narratives
through Time-Space Data
Chiung-min Tsai
Research Center for Digital Humanities
National Taiwan University
June 5, 2013

2. Purpose
• A narrative is a representation of a history,
biography, or process in which a sequence of
events has been constructed into a coherent
story.
• Telling stories trough space and time
• Uncovering or answering new questions about
past times, past spaces

3. Emerging Trend
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•
•
•
•
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Geo-visualization
Geospatial Narratives
Spatial Humanities
Deep Maps
Qualitative GIS
Narrative GIS

4. Humanities versus GIS
contrasting epistemologies
• GIS
– space as entities, fields, objects, attributes, spatial primitives,
geometric topology, schemas, focus on accuracy and precision,
and ultimately, reductionism
– Spatial analysis, modeling, optimizing solution space
– Scientific method – quantitative and cartographic space
• Humanities
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–
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Nuanced emphasis on the individual and the unique
Prominent role of story telling and multiple media
Question the emergent complex of text and narrative
Interlace textures of experience, memory, artifact
Maintain imprecision, uncertainty, ambiguity
GIS as a Narrative Platform

5. Data
(1) Event: semantic elements (who did what),
(2) Time: temporal elements (when),
(3) Place: spatial elements (where)

6. Data Representation
• Types of Spatial Data:
– points,
– lines,
– polygons
• Coverage of different time

10. Old Land Deeds of Taiwan
10

11. Location and boundaries of the land
The price
The date
Deed type
Names of the sellers
Signatures
of the sellers
03/10/2010
Name of the buyer
ISGC
Names of the
witnesses and the
scrivener
11

12. GIS info about the Japanese
Colonial Records sub-collection
國中圖臺灣總督府檔案抄錄契約
文書 ( 15899件)
過濾出可判別地號的部份
(約 12000件)
利用自動化的方式區分出地點(堡
庄名完全比對與模糊比對)
透過ArcGIS軟體繪出這些契書的
分佈圖
12

13. 總督府檔案抄錄契約文書GIS查詢系統
http://thdl.ntu.edu.tw/tools
13

14. 連結資料庫瀏覽
查閱特定地方之搜尋結果
點閱metadata、全文
及相關人名地名詞頻

15. •
1700-1836
1700-1838
1700-1850

16. 16

17. http://newnrch.digital.ntu.edu.tw/prototype/index.php

22. More Example of Story-telling GIS
http://storymaps.esri.com/stories/civilwar/

23. More Example of Story-telling GIS
http://story.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapTour/index.html?appid=f90046e0ce8e44e2a128f032
5fccb2af&webmap=051d2c8302a747ce8335a0a1f106fc86

24. More Example of Story-telling GIS
http://storymaps.esri.com/snack/

25. http://www.byzantinejewry.net/
Clickable History

27. Q&A