Closing seminar of the Local Time Machine project Alegoria : Time Machine Europe

Date: 16 December 2021
Time: 09.30-17.00 CET
Venue: Online
Registration: Required, free-of-charge
Language: French

Closing seminar of the Local Time Machine project ALEGORIA

The ALEGORIA (Advanced Linking And Exploitation Of DiGitized Ge0gRaphic Iconographic HeritAge) project aims at facilitating the valorization of institutional iconographic collections describing the French territory at different periods from the interwar period to the present day. These collections, which vary in size from thousands to hundreds of thousands of elements, are made up of oblique or vertical aerial photographs, or land photographs. Contrary to the well-established use of satellite imagery, where professional uses are numerous (scientific, civil and military), the use of these collections remains confidential. They are scattered among different institutions, partially digitized, generally not or poorly documented and poorly georeferenced. Yet they represent a rich heritage, little known by the general public and exploited in a constrained way by its main users (researchers, institutions and local authorities), indirect consultation at the photo library or through classic online photo libraries. The development of such a heritage would benefit from tools allowing the automation of their collection, processing, indexing and interconnection, within a collection but also between collections. Their implementation within applications also implies facilitating their apprehension by non-specialist users, which implies providing user-friendly tools for the visual exploration of these collections. For several SHS use cases (urban visual sociology and tourism), ALEGORIA proposes to address these two issues by establishing, on the one hand, a proof of concept of the feasibility and added value of describing, structuring, indexing, and geolocalizing these intra- and inter-fund collections according to different modalities, and on the other hand an innovative prototype of immersive and interactive 3D restitution of these funds (based on its own, the IGN 3D geoportal) in terms of content, metadata and interconnections established.

The consortium is composed of several academic partners in ICT and SSH, as well as content providers:

To view the programme (in French), please click here.

About ALEGORIA

The ALEGORIA project, founded by the ANR (the French National Research Agency), aims at facilitating the promotion of iconographic institutional funds collections describing the French territory in various periods going from the interwar period to our days.

The collections in sight are of variable sizes, between thousands and hundred thousand elements, and are constituted by iconographic representations, which are most of the time oblique, vertical aerial or terrestrial photographs of the environment. Contrary to the well-anchored exploitation which is made of the satellite imagery where the professional practices are many (scientists, civilians and militaries) and the data well-identified and indexed, the promotion of those collections remains confidential and scattered. They are spread within various institutions, digitized partially, generally not or little documented and weakly georeferenced. Nevertheless, they represent a rich heritage, little known by the general public and exploited in a way forced by their main users (researchers, institutions and local authorities), indirect consultation at the library or by means of online classic digital libraries.

The development of such a heritage would benefit from tools allowing to automate their collection, their processing and their indexing, inside the collection itself but also between collections, to be capable of crossing them and then of studying them better. Their implementation within applications implies facilitating their apprehension by users not specialists, it supposes to supply friendly tools for the visual exploration of these collections.

To visit the project website, please click here.