ImagineRio platform will include 20th century maps and thematic data

The Pereira Passos Institute (IPP), an agency of the Rio de Janeiro City Hall, and Rice University, in the United States, signed an agreement that focuses on the ImagineRio platform, developed by the American university as a searchable digital atlas that illustrates the social and urban evolution of the city of Rio de Janeiro throughout its history. The agreement is valid for five years. In addition to digitizing physical maps of the city in the 20th century, the agreement provides for the creation of new interactive tools for viewing cartographic data. IPP City Information Technical Coordinator, Felipe Mandarino, told Agência Brasil that the ImagineRio platform is well developed by Rice University with some partners, but as they focused a lot on cartography from the 16th, 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, they resent more contemporary information, from the 20th century. “They focused more on older cartography and didn’t invest as much time or effort, or else they didn’t find this information from the last century, from the 20th century”. Mandarino said that the IPP has always been enthusiastic about the work of the American university, the issue of maps and cartography. As the institution provides information with interactive maps and time rules, it was in the interest of the institute to learn more about the technologies used there, “since here, we also publish interactive maps”. The IPP has a fairly large collection of maps, aerial photos, cadastral plans from the 20th century. Previous documents have already been worked on with the American university or are at the General Archive of the City and the National Library, Mandarino said. Path “It is in our interest, and theirs too, to work on this collection and make it more accessible. We are talking about products that are still available on paper, some at least digitized. But the path that the cartographic data takes to enter ImagineRio is very complete and interests us”, highlighted the coordinator. The path goes through the digitization of the paper map. Next, it is necessary to georeference it with a copy, that is, to transform it into an image with common points that allow the city to be recognized and the map to be correctly placed in the space. The last step is vectorization, which means drawing what is on the map on top of already digital data, as is done today at the City Hall of Rio de Janeiro. The idea, according to Felipe Mandarino, is to transform this old cartography, through this process of scanning, georeferencing and vectorizing and making it easier to use and available. “In addition to the IPP being able to make the complex and complete path with maps from the 20th century, which Rice University did with the oldest maps, we also now have access to this collection on which they worked, from previous centuries“. The agreement will allow, for the first time, to place thematic layers in the maps. “It’s not just that basic cartography information, but it will have thematic information. They are proposing to work with data from the period of slavery, to recover this history for the map. There are things recovered, but not georeferenced”, explained Mandarino. The use and land cover of the municipality of Rio de Janeiro and its surroundings were also discussed. The planning also foresees the elaboration of a search engine for past addresses. “That is, based on this cartography, we recover what we have of addresses, streets and numbers, because some addresses remain, others do not. They will do it and we will contribute”. Platform Rice University’s history course has always been interested in Brazil and the fact that Rio de Janeiro was the country’s capital strengthened the ImagineRio platform initiative, said the coordinator. Created by professors Alida Metcalf and Farès el-Dahdah, in collaboration with the Space Studies Laboratory of the Center for Research Computing at Rice University and with the support of the Moreira Salles Institute, the site is composed of photos, maps and cadastral plans located both in the time, as in space. In this way, when accessing the site, the user can “walk” through a timeline and learn about the past of each corner of the city of Rio de Janeiro since its foundation. Collaboration with IPP will kick off the fourth version of the platform.

Agência Brasil