SBE-UKRI: Understanding imprecise space and time in narratives through qualitative representations, reasoning, and visualisation

该项目探讨了地理信息系统和相关工具如何识别，分析和可视化定性的地方感以及代表这些系统的定量空间信息。该项目开发的概念和工具，提高了人们整合和解释地理数据的方式，包括位置和相关的情感，在大型文本集合。研究人员检查了档案文本中描述的地方，包括诗歌和口述历史，随后以地图和可视化的形式构建了这些文本地理的空间表示。这些目标是通过开发文本来源的方法来实现的，这些方法允许最初为精确测量的空间数据设计的地理空间技术有效地使用不精确和模糊的空间信息。该项目包括一个由历史学家、数据科学家和制图师组成的团队，与英国研究机构的伙伴团队合作。此外，该项目还支持研究生和初级研究人员，并将其成果和工具提供给更广泛的学术界和遗产合作伙伴。该项目建立在两个案例研究的基础上，包括广泛的文本语料库：a）英格兰湖区景观的诗意描述，一种富有表现力且经常隐喻的地方语言;和B）来自美国大屠杀博物馆的幸存者证词，描述了在极端条件和迷失方向下的地点和运动。这些案例研究使研究人员能够为复杂多样的文本材料开发概念和工具，同时加强与从事文化遗产项目的利益相关者的技术应用。该方法建立在自然语言处理和定性空间和时间推理的应用之上，以提取、定位和上下文化有关地点的不精确信息，随后可以使用高级视觉分析和表示来探索这些信息，以测试和交流结果。该项目旨在展示这些技术如何不仅可以揭示一个地方或事件的位置，而且还可以揭示在那里的感觉以及对特定历史行为者的意义。该提案是根据SBE-UKRI领导机构机会授予的。该奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This project explores how Geographical Information Systems and related tools can identify, analyze and visualize qualitative senses of place alongside the quantitative spatial information that typify these systems. The project develops concepts and tools that enhance the ways that people integrate and interpret geographical data, including locations and associated sentiments, in large textual collections. The researchers examine places that are described in archival texts, including poetry and oral histories, and subsequently construct spatial representations of these textual geographies in the form of maps and visualizations. These goals are achieved by developing approaches to textual sources that allow imprecise and ambiguous spatial information to be used effectively by geospatial technologies that were initially designed for precisely measured spatial data. The project includes a team of historians, data scientists, and cartographers in collaboration with partner teams at research institutions in the United Kingdom. Additionally, the project supports graduate students and junior researchers as well as offering its results and tools to the wider scholarly community and heritage partners.This project builds upon two case studies comprising extensive textual corpora: a) poetic depictions of landscapes in the Lake District of England, an expressive and often metaphorical language of place; and b) survivor testimonies from the US Holocaust Museum, describing place and movement under extreme conditions and disorientation. These case studies allow the researchers to develop concepts and tools for complex and varied textual materials while enhancing the applications of the techniques with stakeholders working on cultural heritage projects. The approach is founded on the application of natural language processing and qualitative spatial and temporal reasoning to extract, locate, and contextualize imprecise information about places, which can subsequently be explored with advanced visual analytics and representation to test and communicate results. The project aims to show how these techniques can reveal not only where a place or event is located but also what it might feel like to be there and what it meant to particular historical actors.This proposal is awarded under the SBE-UKRI Lead Agency Opportunity.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.