Sinfonía del Nuevo Mundo: el modelaje espacio-temporal de HGIS de las Indias, una infraestructura SIG para la América hispana borbónica

Abstract

This article outlines the basic difficulties for the modelling of a historical GIS data infrastructure on Bourbon Spanish America which aims at providing reconstructions of a dozen territorial “levels” and settlements across the double continent, from California and Louisiana to Patagonia, for a period of 108 years (1701-1808). Due to the manifold sources of uncertainty at many levels it is particularly demanding to successfully model the spatial embodiment of territorial entities and their change over time. In this text, we explain how we isolate different types of uncertainty and create different chronologies across the database. In more detail, we will show how we reassemble the different parts and integrate them into a geodatabase with a single chronology based on queries on the different partial chronologies. Also, we show how this workflow has been implemented to allow automatic creation of shapefiles from simple tables through the interface of our homepage. Instead of a narrative conclusion, we present a synoptic graphic visualizing how the different parts and processes provide a stable framework for a GIS data infrastructure covering a complete period of time – a framework that can be easily be re-implemented for different fields, regions, and periods.