CFP: Uncertainty and Inference in Historical GIS

Noted by way of H-HISTGEOG:

Call for papers: RGS-Institute of British Geographers Annual International Conference, 27-29 August 2008

Uncertainty and Inference in Historical GIS

Organisers: Richard Healey and Humphrey Southall, Dept. of Geography, University of Portsmouth

Historical GIS is a developing sub-field at the interface between substantive quantitative work in historical geography and evolving theories of spatio-temporal GIS. However, a number of obstacles must be overcome before potential synergies between these two areas can be fully realised.

Among these are a range of theoretical, methodological and substantive questions that need to be explored more fully. Examples include dealing with imprecise or rapidly changing geographical units or locations for which data are available, data comparability over extended timespans, uncertainty in chronologies of events, sporadic spatio-temporal data coverage and the related problems of utilising GIS methods to make inferences about past economic or social processes, based on very limited or unreliable archival sources. This session aims to provide a forum to discuss both theoretical issues and substantive case studies, either from the UK or further afield.


Please send expressions of interest to: Richard.Healey@port.ac.uk or Humphrey.Southall@port.ac.uk

Deadline for title and abstracts (c. 200 words): 31 January 2008

For further details of the conference please see RGS-IBG website.