The Atlas Project - Comparing time and place

The Atlas Project is an interdisciplinary project investigating spatial and historical exploration of geographical areas, with Hunters Wharf in Hobart, Australia being the example space used in this research. One of the goals of this research is to create a mobile application allowing historical information to be transferred out of the traditional static historical media and made more easily available for a variety of different tasks. Through a heavily iterative process, a prototype designed through continuous discussion amongst three different groups led to the research focussing on comparison of historical maps supported by additional spatiotemporally indexed features as the primary means of interacting with historical data. This paper outlines the iterative development of this prototype, presenting research challenges and solutions encountered during that process; it introduces a novel approach of presenting both spatially and temporally sensitive information that satisfies multiple workflows and multiple disciplines. Finally, the paper presents many interesting opportunities for future work and further analysis toward a generalised method of providing context sensitive spatiotemporal map overlays on mobile devices.