TACOS: 21st Century Geospatial #HistEnv Data Management

Archaeogeomancy: Digital Heritage Specialists – archaeological geomatics – the majick of spatial data in archaeology – archaeological information systems for the digital age:

TACOS – the event

On 14 May 2014 the Council for British Archaeology (CBA) hosted a one day seminar on behalf of FISH and HEIRNET at the University of York to discuss common issues facing the historic environment information sector and make progress towards a shared vision and agenda for historic environment information management.

The TACOS keynotes, discussions and demonstrations will build upon a ‘show and tell’ event (the NACHOS seminar) held at the British Museum in November 2012, which identified the need for integration of information sources in support of the National Heritage Protection Plan (NHPP). The seminar will investigate current historic environment information management practices and identify areas for improvement through cross-sector collaboration.

Aims

5 Taco plate by ulterior epicure

Tacos

The key aims of the seminar were to:

  • Encourage discussion between different groups that produce and manage historic environment information from across the sector (professional, research and voluntary to identify common goals and issues
  • Develop information sharing networks and working partnerships across the sector to pool resources in the areas of skills development and application of information technology

There’s more info on the event (aims, topics, etc) here.

Programme

The full programme for the day is here. The day was filled with really interesting talks on a range of topics focussing on three overarching themes:

  • Use of information and reuse of data (e.g. ‘Big Data’ projects reusing historic environment information/datasets, the role of information standards, the integration of different types of historic environment information built heritage information
  • Skills development (e.g. skill gaps in professional practice, university provision)
  • Use of new information systems and technology (e.g. access to information and technology, how skills development and training is accessed – potential barriers)

Watch Again

The whole event was recorded and published to YouTube by Doug Rocks-Macqueen. The playlist below includes all the videos from the day and the official Storify of the event is also embedded below.

Geosemantic Technologies

This section is a write up of my talk from the recent TACOS event which formed part of Session 3: Information Systems & Technology. The session was chaired by Keith May (English Heritage) and started with an excellent presentation by Ceri Binding (University of South Wales, Hypermedia Research Unit), an overview of the work he has been undertaking working with heritage vocabularies and Linked Data. The outputs of the Seneschal project have already had an impact in their short existence. Rather helpfully for me, Ceri covered all the basics of Linked Data, RDF and introduced schemas such as SKOS.

Video

Slides

My slides are available on Slideshare as usual:

Storify

I’ve written up the salient points of the event as pertaining to geosemantic tools, geospatial data and Linked Data.


http://storify.com/pauljcripps/tacos-2014

The official Storify:

 

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