Les acteurs

The FNP project and the Huma-num Paris Time Machine consortium

The FNP project aims at setting up an Open data platform for geohistorical data. This project was born following the observation of the absence of a repository for data from research projects dealing with geohistorical information. The FNP project is statutorily and budgetarily autonomous, but scientifically supported by the Paris Time Machine (PTM) consortium, whose action it continues on aspects not directly treated in the framework of the consortium's work.

For the record, the PTM Consortium's actions are based on the notion of geohistorical repository, conceived as a heuristic concept that allows research programs or teams to develop innovative and shareable practices in the analysis of geohistorical objects, in accordance with FAIR and Open Data principles. Paris has been - as announced at the beginning of the project - a space of experimentation, a kind of archetype, on which PTM has developed its first works.

They took the form of a series of "typical work sites" that allowed for the pragmatic exploration of the different expressions of the notion of geohistorical referential, the medium-term goal being to produce a series of methodological guides on the constitution and use of these referentials.

The issues of production and then valorization of geohistorical data and repositories are generally well addressed by research teams, unlike the issues related to the deposit and perpetuation of data, which are generally left aside, often for lack of time, means or clearly identified tools. However, they become strategic in the context of digital humanities, because beyond the debate on interdisciplinarity, the need for which and the scientific interest of which are generally agreed upon, the questions of openness and access to data, which is sometimes referred to as "raw data", are the subject of new legislation, some of which will be restrictive.

Among these, the law on the digital republic promulgated on October 7, 2016 sets the rules for the necessary opening of data produced by public administrations, including universities and research institutions. It establishes a principle of openness by default of public administration data (Decree No. 2016-1922 of 28/12/2016), a principle involving the use of open licenses and the respect of principles corresponding for the European scale to the principles summarized by the acronym "FAIR" (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable).

The Digital Factory of the Past project is therefore in line with the work carried out by the consortium, whose work on the issues of open data and Open Data it expands and clarifies. It has obtained funding under the SHS 2020 envelope of the Ministry of Research (MESRI) for one year.

The LabEx DynamiTE Long-Term Settlement Systems Working Group (GT SPTL)

The SPTL 2020-2025 WG follows the SPTL 2012-2019 WG, whose objective was to combine the knowledge and know-how of geographers, historians, archaeologists and mathematicians to describe, conceptualize and model the dynamics of settlement over time in their spatial expressions and temporal rhythms.

This work led to a cross-reflection on the concepts used in this field and to the collective writing of an illustrated spatio-temporal lexicon of long-term settlement systems based on the temporalities and spatialities of networks and territories, published in the "Villes et Territoires" collection of the Presses Universitaires François Rabelais de Tours in 2020 under the title Le temps long du peuplement : concepts et mots-clés, Lena Sanders, Anne Bretagnolle, Patrice Brun, Marie-Vic Ozouf-Marignier, and Nicolas Verdier dir., 480 p. Within the framework of the new project carried out by the SPTL WG, the objective is to make a shift, which, while continuing to focus on concepts, constructs an interrogation on the way we implement the data we mobilize.

More precisely, it is a question of better understanding how we accept to compare objects, such as the city, the network, the limit, the mesh, etc., not only in time, sometimes long, but also in space. The investigation of our practices should allow us to better understand how our disciplines work the question of space-time. The objective is also to work on the articulation between concepts, historical and geographical information (geohistorical database) and the methods that allow us to move from one to the other, in order to answer questions about the transformations of geographical space, whether it be in the short or long term.

Our objective is therefore both to make existing geohistorical databases better known (through study days, workshops and even an observatory), and also to reflect collectively on the ways in which they are constructed and used in problems related to the observation of spatial systems in the long term. It is within the framework of this second axis that the relations between the FNP and the SPTL WG have developed in recent years.

The CRIHAM laboratory

The CRIHAM laboratory (UR 15507) of the University of Limoges, in collaboration with its research engineering service, has given an important place to reflections and works related to geomatics, digital humanities and geohistory more generally.

Two recent research programs, still active, illustrate the different thematic and methodological aspects developed in these fields: the Atlas Historique du Limousin (https://www.unilim.fr/atlas-historique-limousin/) and Col&Mon (ANR-15-CE27-0005, https://cercorapps.univ-st-etienne.fr/colemon/). The Atlas, financed by the Limousin Region and then Nouvelle-Aquitaine, is a portal that creates a synergy for the community of researchers, academic or not, around geohistorical issues. It is built around several axes: glossary, index and pedagogical tools, thematic cartographic files, repertory and search module for old maps and plans (their georeferencing is in progress) and a large-scale repository, centered on the city of Limoges and based on a geovisualization tool for old topographic plans linked to different spatial databases (archaeology, old photographs, cultural works).

It allows the valorization of geohistorical works, the opening of a space of sharing and collaborative reflections around historical cartography and spatio-temporal databases and proposes a support of experimentation of web visualization tools. The Col&Mon project focuses on an essential phenomenon of the Middle Ages, that of the ecclesiastical network, through one of its essential components, the religious community establishments.

It implements a digital corpus allowing to list and describe in detail, institutionally and physically, several thousand of these establishments. Within this framework, open web interfaces are being developed that allow complex, thematic and chronological searches, spatial analysis tools and access to all of this data in tabular, graphic and cartographic form.

This program is an opportunity to carry out in-depth and multidisciplinary reflections on historical spatio-temporal data and their modeling, with an emphasis on the notions of genericity and interoperability in order to collect data from various origins, to be able to compare them, analyze them and then disseminate them. New generic time series models have also been formalized, in particular in order to take into account the notions of temporal uncertainty.

The LIENSs laboratory (Littoral Environment and Societies) UMR 7266 La Rochelle University / CNRS

Within the framework of the study programs on the history of coastal areas carried out since the creation of the laboratory in 2008, LIENSs has developed geolocalized databases allowing to structure and give access to data describing the historical component of the studied areas.

The portal GEOLITTO, (https://geolitto.huma-num.fr/) created by the LIENSs gives access to WebSIG created within the framework of these various programs and moreover freely disseminates GIS resources that can be mobilized by the community of geohistorians and geomaticians. The LIENSs has thus acquired a strong position in the field of geohistory, on coastal territories and even beyond (central technical role in the ANR Alpage program on the Parisian space (https://alpage.huma-num.fr/).

International programs such as the ANR ATLAS program in collaboration with German, Spanish, and Tunisian laboratories rely on the technical skills and experience in geohistorical data of LIENSs. (http://atlas-cities.com/). https://lienss.univ-larochelle.fr/Un-nouveau-programme-ANR-en-Sciences-humaines-porte-par-l-equipe-Estran-1753

The LIENSs has also participated in the Historical Atlas of New Aquitaine (AHNA), in collaboration with the CRIHAM. The continuation of the implementation of a solid methodology for the acquisition, management and dissemination of localized geohistorical data is a strong issue in research data management.

The EHESS geomatics platform

Geographic Information Systems (GIS) allow the association of different types of information in a geolocalized space. The EHESS Geomatics Platform (PG) aims to facilitate the circulation and valorization of geographic information acquired and produced at EHESS as well as the specific know-how and reflections developed at EHESS around spatialized information.

The interest in spatializing information in the social sciences is long-standing at EHESS, since the founders, such as Lucien Febvre and Fernand Braudel, developed a cross-disciplinary reflection on space and time and built a French-style geohistory that largely contributed to the development of spatialized historical data. They were able to collaborate from 1954 onwards with the cartography laboratory, created at the EHESS (VIth section of the EPHE) by Jacques Bertin and active until 2000.

Interest in the historical study of space has been a distinctive feature in the history of several EHESS centers (Ceaf, CAMS, CASE, at LAS etc.). At the CRH, the GGHTerres (Groupe de Géographie et d'histoire des territoires) played an important role in the constitution of the Atlas de la Révolution française in the 1980s and 2000s. The Laboratoire de Démographie Historique (Ladéhis) put online in the mid-2000s the site "Des villages de Cassini aux communes d'aujourd'hui".

Today, a dozen centers are regular partners of the EHESS geomatic platform. The geomatics platform is a transversal and interdisciplinary tool. It relies on several engineers who lead and direct it. It produces spatialized historical data that allows us to observe the evolution of territories over the long term. EHESS has a significant heritage of data acquired and produced on a global scale.

In addition to geographic data and services, the platform also proposes the development of new geomatic tools as well as a reflection on the production of cartographic information at a time when cartographic knowledge is being transformed by Web 2.0, which makes users also producers, voluntarily or involuntarily, of geographic information.

The geomatics platform, which has human and material resources, storage tools, services and a website, is also involved in several projects financed by PSL for the valorization of old sources, in particular part of the funds of the Cartography Laboratory created by Jacques Bertin, thanks to semantic web technologies. The platform provides training that promotes interdisciplinarity through the meeting of students and researchers from very different disciplines and environments. About 70 researchers and students have been trained since 2013. The platform's engineers supervise students working on research projects at EHESS and other institutions such as the Ecole nationale de sciences géographiques (ENSG). They also lead a computer development course.

Our working groups therefore have coherent objectives that should allow us to build a common reflection useful to all.