Automatic Search of Multiword Place Names on Historical Maps

Rhett Olson, Jina Kim, Yao Yi Chiang

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceedingConference contribution

Abstract

Historical maps are invaluable sources of information about the past, and scanned historical maps are increasingly accessible in online libraries. To retrieve maps from these large libraries that contain specific places of interest, previous work has applied computer vision techniques to recognize words on historical maps, enabling searches for maps that contain specific place names. However, searching for multiword place names is challenging due to complex layouts of text labels on historical maps. This paper proposes an efficient query method for searching a given multiword place name on historical maps. Using existing methods to recognize words on historical maps, we link single-word text labels into potential multiword phrases by constructing minimum spanning trees. These trees aims to link pairs of text labels that are spatially close and have similar height, angle, and capitalization. We then query these trees for the given multiword place name. We evaluate the proposed method in two experiments: 1) to evaluate the accuracy of the minimum spanning tree approach at linking multiword place names and 2) to evaluate the number and time range of maps retrieved by the query approach. The resulting maps reveal how places using multiword names have changed on a large number of maps from across history.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Title of host publicationGeoSearch 2024 - Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Searching and Mining Large Collections of Geospatial Data
EditorsHao Li, Abhishek Potnis, Wenwen Li, Dalton Lunga, Martin Werner, Andreas Zufle
PublisherAssociation for Computing Machinery, Inc
Pages9-12
Number of pages4
ISBN (Electronic)9798400711480
DOIs
StatePublished - Oct 29 2024
Event3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Searching and Mining Large Collections of Geospatial Data, GeoSearch 2024 - Atlanta, United States
Duration: Oct 29 2024 → …

Publication series

NameGeoSearch 2024 - Proceedings of the 3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Searching and Mining Large Collections of Geospatial Data

Conference

Conference3rd ACM SIGSPATIAL International Workshop on Searching and Mining Large Collections of Geospatial Data, GeoSearch 2024
Country/TerritoryUnited States
CityAtlanta
Period10/29/24 → …

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2024 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).

Keywords

  • cartography
  • historical maps
  • minimum spanning tree
  • toponym

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