I am pleased to announce public beta testing of
EventZoom.net - a site for
displaying
sets of historical events on maps zoomable in time and space, using data
from Wikidata.
EventZoom.net is a data visualisation site that plots events in time and
space on a map.
Currently Google Maps, and with plans of adding others in the future. Here,
you can zoom
on events in the dimension of time as well as on the map itself. For this,
EventZoom uses
time spans (with a beginning and end) tightly integrated into the solution,
enabling a useful
way of filtering out and hiding those events that are outside of your zoom
focus. You can
select individual years, months or days to have the map display only those
events that
co-occured during that time span, down to single days. Stepping through,
for example,
World War II or other major events year by year, or month by month, might
make an
interesting view on the progression of history.
As for the future, besides adding more maps (and types of maps), the import
and
export options of the EventZoom platform will be extended and improved.
Plans
also include adding more sites. At the moment, the Wikidata import
specifically
depends on
wdq.wmflabs.org, but that will change as the Wikidata API
evolves.
Feedback from the Wikidata and Wikimedia community is most welcome,
especially
regarding the UI and functionality: How useful do you think it is in terms
of giving an
overview over major events - and for example identifying events missing
from Wikidata?
And how best to present other types of data? (Everything with a combination
of
geolocations and temporal data may be considered.)
Link:
http://eventzoom.net/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Johansen.fred