Construction of an old-map framework for promoting historical GIS research and education

‘Historical GIS’, a fusion of historical geography and geographic information science, has undergone rapid development within Japan and overseas since the 2000s as part of the digital humanities (DH), and involving collaboration between research fields in both the humanities and sciences. However, much geospatial information— such as drawings, maps, registers, statistics, and other data from Japan's recent past—remains undigitized and so unavailable in GIS form, unshared, and unavailable to the public. In order to expand historical GIS understanding regarding Japan's recent past and modern times, it will be necessary to promote the digitization of geospatial information, much of which is paper-based, convert it in an appropriate manner to GIS, and share it with the public. Also, in order to promote the expanded use of historical GIS among historical researchers who do not specialize in GIS, such as museum curators, and school instructors (among others), it will be necessary to establish a simple framework that facilitates online searches, GIS analysis, etc. together in one place.