Development of an historical GIS for the Montreal area using Esri’s ArcGIS software

The year 2017 marks the 375th anniversary of the foundation of the city of Montreal. The Laboratory of Remote Sensing, Department of Geography, Montreal University, and Esri Canada want to take part in the celebrations by offering to the Montreal community an interactive tool illustrating the historical evolution of the city of Montreal. To develop such a tool the establishment of an historical GIS is needed. To build such a GIS many questions have to be studied: How to locate landscape features (buildings, roads, wooded areas, etc.) depicted on old maps using present day cartographic standards? How to project old aerial photos to a present day datum? How to integrate information extracted from these archived documents into a common database preserving reference in time and space? What is the best method to visualize the evolution of the urban environment? The aim of the internship is to explore solutions to these problems by developing a prototype of this system. Skill development in geomatics will be the principal gain for the intern, while for the partner organization this project will enrich his software with applications in a less studied type of GIS.

Faculty Supervisor:

Francois Cavayas

Student:

Bastien Fontaine

Partner:

Esri Canada

Discipline:

Geography / Geology / Earth science

Sector:

Information and communications technologies

University:

Université de Montréal