BEGIN:VCALENDAR VERSION:2.0 PRODID:-//Memento EPFL// BEGIN:VEVENT SUMMARY:Seminar: New Approaches to Historical Spatial Data DTSTART:20250829T140000 DTEND:20250829T160000 DTSTAMP:20260526T082807Z UID:22111954627564f1374d45b7fb447e19580a558beff63cc6983e3494 CATEGORIES:Conferences - Seminars DESCRIPTION:Prof. Leif Isaksen is Professor of Ancient History and Digital Humanities in the Department of Classics\, Ancient History\, Religion and Theology at the University of Exeter. His main interests are in spatial a nd temporal representation in the humanities - both in the ancient world a nd the modern one - and the use of Intelligent Systems to relate and inter rogate online resources about the past. This is most notably as Director o f several projects associated with the Pelagios Network\, including the de velopment of the Recogito annotation platform. He has a background in arch aeology\, and directed the Cluny Hill Dig. He is also engaged with develop ment of digital skills in the Arts and Humanities\, specifically through t he Hot Source! and DISKAH projects. Leif has been involved as an Officer\, Trustee or Steering Group member of various Humanities scholarly organisa tions worldwide\, including Computer Applications in Archaeology\, the Eur opean Association for the Digital humanities\, and the International Socie ty for the History of the Map\, and was Executive Board Chair of the Allia nce of Digital Humanities Organisations (ADHO) from 2019 to 2021.   Dr. S tefan Leyk is a Professor of Geography and Associate Chair for Undergradua te Studies in the Department of Geography at the University of Colorado Bo ulder\, USA. He served as the Director of the CU Boulder Population Center and is the Interim Director of the Population Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science. He is a Geographical Information Scientist specializi ng in uncertainty analysis\, demographic small area estimation and spatio- temporal modeling\, with extensive collaborative research in spatial epide miology\, spatial demography and coupled socio-environmental systems. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation\, the National Institutes of Health\, the European Commission\, The Fogarty Internationa l Center\, and the National Renewable Energy Laboratory. Current research efforts include the analysis of multi-scale mortality and morbidity patter ns\, demographic small area estimation techniques such as dasymetric model ing as well as the production and analysis of historical settlement data i n the study of urban change\, and the vulnerability and exposure of the bu ilt environment to natural hazards such as sea level rise or wildfire. Th is research is of methodological and applied nature offering analytical in novations to improve substantive research efforts in interdisciplinary set tings and our understanding of the interactions between social and environ mental systems.\nIntroduction\nThis seminar brings together two leading sc holars exploring innovative ways of representing historical geographies.\n Leif Isaksen will show how geovisualization opens new perspectives on pre- Modern geographic documents\, from the Ravenna Cosmography to Islamic cosm ology.\nStefan Leyk will present large-scale historical settlement dataset s that reveal over a century of urban transformation and exposure to natur al hazards.\nTogether\, these talks highlight how digital methods reshape our understanding of space\, time\, and human experience across centuries. \n\nContent\n\nLeif Isaksen - Geovisualizing ancient geographic documents\ nThis talk will explore the idea of geovisualization – as distinct from standard GIS or digital mapping – as a means for interpreting and compar ing pre-Modern geographic documents. It will present two current works-in- progress as case studies. The first is development of an online platform t o explore the relationship between the Ravenna Cosmography\, an eighth cen tury written description of the world\, with the content of the Peutinger Map\, a Medieval copy of a Roman world map which appears to have served as one of the Cosmography’s primary sources. The second examines an appare nt shift in cosmological perspective as Greek geographic sources were abso rbed into Abbasid scholarship in the ninth century. Interactive models are used to demonstrate how a seemingly subjective change in world view may h ave in turn have led to unexpected practical consequences for Islamic geog raphy.\n\nStefan Leyk - Mapping and analyzing the built environment over l ong time periods: Contributions to Urban Science and Natural Hazards Analy sis\nThe collection\, processing\, and analysis of remote sensing data sin ce the early 1970s has rapidly improved our understanding of change on the Earth's surface. While satellite-based Earth observation has proven to be of vast scientific value\, these data are typically confined to recent de cades of observation and often lack important thematic detail. This talk s ummarizes recent efforts on the advancement in this arena and describes th e construction and evaluation of new spatially explicit settlement data fo r the United States and Spain that are consistently enumerated at fine spa tial and temporal granularity and extend over a period of more than 120 ye ars. These unique data layers are created through extensive data integrati on and scraping processes using input sources such as building-stock\, rea l estate as well as building footprint data and enable us to extract diffe rent key attributes as series of gridded geospatial datasets. These datase ts are parts of the Historical Settlement Data Compilation for the United States (HISDAC-US) and Spain (HISDAC-ES). This talk will also showcase ear ly applications of these datasets in analyzing urban change over long time periods and assessing the trends of exposure of the built environment to natural hazards such as wildfire and sea level rise. It will conclude with outlooks on ongoing research related to the creation of historical popula tion data through spatial re-allocation techniques and first attempts to p roject future distributions of the built environment and populations. \n\ n  LOCATION:BC 410 https://plan.epfl.ch/?room==BC%20410 STATUS:CONFIRMED END:VEVENT END:VCALENDAR