Uncertain spaces, uncertain places - dealing with geographic information in Digital Humanities on the example of a language legacy data set Amelie Dorn Renato Rocha Souza, Barbara Piringer & Eveline Wandl-Vogt Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH-OeAW) GI-FORUM @ Salzburg (AT) 02-05.07.2019 https://www.gi-forum.org/ Uncertain spaces, uncertain places - dealing with geographic information in Digital Humanities on the example of a language legacy data set Renato Rocha Souza1, Amelie Dorn1, Barbara Piringer1 & Eveline Wandl-Vogt1 1Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities (ACDH-OeAW) GI-FORUM @ Salzburg (AT) 02-05.07.2019 Presented by: https://www.gi-forum.org/ 3 Presentation outline ● Uncertainty and complex/post normal science ● Taxonomies of uncertainty ● Uncertainty in Digital Humanities ○ The exploreAT! project and the DBÖ collection ○ Geospatial uncertainties in the DBÖ collection ● Discussion 4 Uncertainty and complex/post normal science ● Galbraith (1977) - age of uncertainty (!) ○ What about our times? ● Jim Gray (2009) - transformed scientific method. ○ transformation in the whole research cycle, from data capture and data curation to data analysis and data visualization ● Nowotny et al (2013; 2015) - science and uncertainty ○ “science thrives on the cusp of uncertainty” ○ “It is therefore crucial to distinguish when and where science needs time and space when to engage with uncertainty” ● Funtowicz and Ravetz (2018) - post normal science ○ process that recognizes the potential for gaps in knowledge and understanding that cannot be resolved in ways other than revolutionary science ○ "facts [are] uncertain, values in dispute, stakes high and decisions urgent" ○ contradictory perspectives and multiple viewpoints should be incorporated in the scientific process 5 based on "Uncertainty." New World Encyclopedia, 6 Jan 2016, 21:11 UTC. 12 Jun 2019, 08:39 . Taxonomies of uncertainty 6 Based on Thomas (2013) Taxonomies of uncertainty 7 Based on Shattuck et al (2009) Taxonomies of uncertainty 8 Based on Lovell (1995) Taxonomies of uncertainty 9 based on Vullings et al (2007) Taxonomy of (spatial) uncertainties Uncertainty in Digital Humanities • increased attention in recent years (cf. Binder et al., 2014; Track @ TEEM conference 2017/2018/2019) • project PROVIDEDH (PROgressive VIsual DEcision-making in Digital Humanities) → supporting decision-making in uncertainty aware contexts • spatial concepts @ DBÖ → continuous & important element of data transformation & analysis (cf. Wandl-Vogt 2006a; 2006b; 2008a; Bartelme et al., 2008; Bartelme & Scholz, 2010; Scholz et al., 2016; Hrastnig, 2018; Scholz et al., 2018) 10 11 The exploreAT! project and the DBÖ collection 12 The exploreAT! project and the DBÖ collection 13 The exploreAT! project and the DBÖ collection XML/TEI files MySQL DB number of entries 2.416.499 65.839 associated locations total unique unique ● Bundesland 1.316.889 9 - ● Großregion 1.296.722 32 415● Kleinregion 1.286.463 323 ● Gemeinde 1.198.447 1.146 3.058 ● Ort 1.198.447 1.145 19.946 ● Ort (without associated Gemeinde) 395.186 24.788 - with location without location with location without location entries vs. location 1.712.705 703.794 7333 58.506 time span of entries oldest newer oldest newer 1010 2008 1196 2012 Webbrowser based visual analysis @ exploreAT! 14 Collection explorer v1.0 source: Benito et al, 2016; https://exploreat.acdh-dev.oeaw.ac.at/exploreAT-collectionexplorer/ https://exploreat.acdh-dev.oeaw.ac.at/exploreAT-collectionexplorer/ Prototypical LOD modelling of DBÖ spatial data Source: Scholz, Hrastnig & Wandl-Vogt 2017 @ TU Graz 15 16 (our) Taxonomy of uncertainties 17 Geospatial uncertainties in the DBÖ collection Uncertainties Intrinsic Extrinsic Ontological (lack of capacity to know what really exists) Epistemic (imprecision / ignorance / incompleteness) User input (errors / misinterpretation s / entropy / information truncation) Data conversion (uncertainties introduced by changing technologies) Data record (ambiguities / undecibilities / data conversion errors / users’ introduced errors) Spatial uncertainties - Places that ceased to exist - Unknown places - Exact place vs. approximate/region - Typos - Abbreviations - Changing transcription guidelines - Assumptions on certain orthographies - Lack of precision on creating data records - Guessing - Prejudice and biases - Language codification errors - Errors in the conversion of formats and databases - Heterogeneity of data sources - Homographs (places) - Difference in details among records 18 Geospatial uncertainties in the DBÖ collection: changing borders Grafenried, (= Lučina) in the Bohemian Forest has completely vanished as a geographical name or political region. "Oberplan" (= Horní Planá) is an example of a region that used to belong to the Austrian empire, but now is in the Czech republic. Examples of spatial uncertainties on the original paperslips. Source: the authors 20 Discussion ● Factors increasing uncertainty ○ Data collected over long periods; ○ Heterogeneity of data set (multimedia sources, geospatial, temporal, linguistic); ● Opportunities + future work ○ Multidisciplinary approaches ○ Crowdsourcing / citizens’ input: ■ e.g. confirming/correcting references to locations ■ e.g adding links to resources / adding own material ● Future explorations of uncertainties & geolocation ○ distances / areas: concepts of nearness ○ fuzzy borders (linguistic) vs strict borders (administrative) ○ systematization of geolocations → one name/location referring to one hierarchy → potential for collaboration :-) amelie.dorn I renato.souza I barbara.piringer I eveline.wandl-vogt@oeaw.ac.at Thank you 21 @adooorn @rrsouza @BarbaraPiringer @caissarl @PROVIDEDH #explorations4u