Hartwell China Historical GIS

Prof. Robert Hartwell (1932 - 1996) created his China Historical GIS under the auspices of his company Chinese Historical Studies. His estate left the data to Harvard University. These materials include functional GIS datasets for the Chinese Dynasties, from Tang to Ming, which were based on the concept of \"co-location,\" or the use of GIS representations of modern county-level administrative units as building blocks to depict the approximate shapes of historical areas. Making use of county boundary data for 1992, (obtained from Crissman's ACASIAN data), Hartwell represented historical units that occupied roughly the same areas by merging or splitting the 1992 counties. Where the contemporary boundaries could not be \"co-located\" in this fashion, Hartwell drew in approximate line boundaries to divide the contemporary units to fit the historical situations and therefore provide an approximation of the historical unit's area. Although the resulting boundaries are, in many cases, problematic representations, the GIS remains an interesting hueristic GIS tool for sorting, querying, and creating digital maps for selected areas within the major dynasties up to the Ming. Harvard University released the original Hartwell datasets on April 2nd, 2001, in conjunction with the CHGIS project, as a useful means of generating approximate spatial entities correlating to historical administrative units. For Version 5, the Hartwell Datasets were renamed according to a filenaming convention (described above) and projected to match the CHGIS V5 standard (2014).罗伯特·哈特韦尔教授（1932-1996）依托其创办的中国历史研究（Chinese Historical Studies）公司，开发了中国历史地理信息系统（China Historical GIS）。其身后将该数据集遗赠给哈佛大学。该批资料涵盖唐至明代中国各朝代的功能型地理信息系统（GIS）数据集，其构建基于“共置（co-location）”理念，即采用现代县级行政单元的GIS表征作为构建单元，以描摹历史区域的大致轮廓。哈特韦尔借助1992年的县级边界数据（源自克里斯曼的ACASIAN数据集），通过合并或拆分1992年的县域单元，来表征地域范围大致重合的历史行政单元。当当代县域边界无法通过该方式实现共置匹配时，哈特韦尔则绘制近似的线状边界，对当代县域单元进行拆分以契合历史实际，从而近似还原历史行政单元的地域范围。尽管最终生成的边界在诸多场景下存在表征缺陷，但该GIS仍是一款颇具价值的启发式工具，可用于对明代及以前主要朝代的选定区域进行数据排序、查询以及数字地图制作。哈佛大学于2001年4月2日联合CHGIS项目组发布了原始哈特韦尔数据集，该数据集可用于生成与历史行政单元相关的近似空间实体，是一款实用的研究工具。在第5版中，哈特韦尔数据集按照前文所述的文件命名规范完成重命名，并进行投影转换以契合CHGIS V5（2014版）标准。