Time Layered Cultural Map

About TLCMap

We acknowledge the Traditional Owners of country throughout Australia and recognise their continuing connection to land, waters and culture. We pay our respects to Elders past, present and emerging.

TLCMap enables humanities researchers to build digital maps, with pathways from beginner to advanced.

TLCMap provides access to platforms for humanities researchers to use, create and integrate datasets and to create interactive visualisations, specifically for Humanities' epistemological and methodological needs.

Working within the ever evolving ecosystem of mapping software we are integrating with existing software and developing new tools and techniques to make common tasks easier and new things possible.

Digital map making is a growing area in humanities. Digital maps help answer research questions, turn research outcomes into research tools for others, and are an interactive and visual way to involve and engage the community.

TLCMap is an online research platform to deliver researcher driven national-scale infrastructure for the humanities, focused on mapping, time series, and data integration.

The TLCMap will expand the use of Australian cultural and historical data for research through sharply defined and powerful discovery mechanisms, enabling researchers to visualise hidden geographic and historical patterns and trends, and to build online resources which present to a wider public the rich layers of cultural data in Australian locations.

TLCMap is not a singular project or software application with a defined research outcome, but infrastructure linking geo-spatial maps of Australian cultural and historical information, adapted to time series and will be a significant contribution to humanities research in Australia. For researchers, it will transform access to data and to visualisation tools and open new perspectives on Australian culture and history. For the public, it will enable increased accessibility to historical and cultural data through visualisations made available online and in print.

Humanities researchers are faced with a bewildering array of software, some established, some not, designed for a wide variety of tasks, some with similar functionality and varying degrees of effectiveness. Often a project would require the expense of employing a software developer for an extended period. We aim to provide easy entry points, based on different research needs and to ensure there is a way to progress to more advanced systems as the idiosyncratic needs of a Digital Humanities project emerge.

One of the main challenges to digital mapping infrastructure for research and humanities is the tendency for project software to be abandoned once results are acquired and the funding runs out. A great deal of value is lost as such software is often not made re-usable. At the same time infrastructure investments often struggle to find users and projects and risk becoming, 'Solutions in search of problems'.

Deb Verhoeven's definition of 'infrastructure' provides a good way to understand what we are aiming to achieve - ‘the conditions of possibility for certain types of activity’. Rather than being a research project we aim to establish the conditions of possibility for Humanities Researchers to use Digital Maps for their research.

This is infrastructure: ‘the conditions of possibility for certain types of activity’ [Verhoeven]
No project without infrastructure. No infrastructure without a project.
Infrastructure saves wasted project development. Projects prove usefulness of infrastructure.
Bridge the gap between solutions looking for problems and projects that die on launch.
Ecosystem not monolith.
Integration before development or duplication.
This is humanities. Not STEM. Not commercial. There are fundamental epistemic and methodological differences. STEM and commercial technology are useful to humanities ends. We are constrained to use STEM and commercial technology but our needs are not limited to it – hence bricolage.
This is not only about space but time. Time is important not only to investigate changes represented by data but change in form.
Not only modern cartographic maps, but lienzos, paintings, imaginary places. Maps may be in any medium, a 2D picture, a 3D model, audio, video, song, dance, narrative, etc.

Prof Paul Arthur Edith Cowan University	FloraCultures Western Australian Aboriginal Journey Ways ECU Art Collection	Analyse, visualise, disseminate
Prof Erik Champion Curtin University	Visualising Geo-Located Images Historical Image Classification Feature Matching the SLWA Collection	Face detection Text extraction Metadata parsing to auto detect data and geolocation.
EProf Hugh Craig University of Newcastle	Mapping domestic violence Mapping goldfields newspaper articles	Visualise spatial and temporal data on domestic violence Map and study newspaper articles on Australian goldfields
Prof Ning Gu University of South Australia	UniSA Smart Cities South Australian built cultural heritage (Burra townships and/or Torrens River) South East Asian built cultural heritage (post-disaster reconstruction)	UniSA Smart Cities to include map-based large-scale spatial awareness. Expand and disseminate information and awareness on South Australian built cultural heritage. Create databases on South East Asian built cultural heritage to aid post-disaster reconstruction.
AProf Mark Harvey University of Newcastle	Indigenous Spatial Heritage Aboriginal Place Names and Ethnobiology	Make existing Aboriginal spatial heritage data more accessible from a single access point.
Prof Victoria Haskins University of Newcastle	The NSW Aborigines Protection/Welfare Board: A History Intimacy and Violence in Anglo Pacific Rim Settler Colonial Societies	Build a database with spatiotemporal data Display the data as a map with a timeline and show mobility
Prof Andrew May University of Melbourne	Encyclopedia of Melbourne	Make Encyclopedia of Melbourne data more open to research and exploratory visualisation with maps and timelines. Immersive environments Collection liberated content Digital storytelling
Prof Lyndall Ryan University of Newcastle	Colonial Frontier Massacres	Extend Colonial Frontier Massacres map to be usable for similar projects, internationally. Ensure certain types of online data remains secure. Workflows for collaborators to maintain data.
Prof Ros Smith University of Newcastle	Dark Places: True Crime In Australia Early Modern Women And The Poetry Of Complaint	Map literary true crime sites Map redaction, reception, publication, etc Map relationships related to literature.
Dr Alana Piper University of Technology Sydney	Criminal Characters	Map historical crime data.
Prof Deb Verhoeven (Partner Investigator) University of Alberta, Canada	HuNI Greek and Italian diasporic cinema Digital infrastructure design for humanities	Overlay multiple data types such as public transport, road, local business and demographic data HuNI will be a delivery platform. Interoperability with HuNI. HuNI to aggregate heterogeneous data from independent sources HuNI to allow keyword, spatial and temporal discovery

Some development, along with research will occur at participating institutions. The central development team is:

Bill Pascoe

System Architect

Alice Jackson

Project Manager

Matt Coller

Snr Front End Developer (Temporal Earth)

Zongwen Fan

Developer (TextMapText / Regito)

Kaine Usher

Developer

Ben McDonnell

Developer (Gazetteer)

Katrina Reynolds

Consulting Mathematician

Dan Price

Development, Content and Testing