GEOMAT: A METHOD OF WEB ARCHITECTURE TO ARTICULATE EVENTS IN TIME AND SPACE

1. GEOMAT:A METHOD OF WEB ARCHITECTURE TO ARTICULATE EVENTS IN TIME AND SPACE Ann Evans Larimore Professor Emerita, Residential College Sandra Lach Arlinghaus Adjunct Professor, School of Natural Resources and Environment Robert Haug Ph.D. Pre-Candidate, Department of Near Eastern Studies All of The University of Michigan, Ann Arbor GEOMAT: Geographic Events Ordering: Maps, Archives, Timelines.

2. Introduction • For analyzing and presenting the historical geography of series of events that change the geography of places and regions, we introduce GEOMAT, a web architectural methodology. • The GEOMAT methodology is the result of our concern to contribute historical geographical scholarship to conflict resolution efforts on many political and economic scales, particularly in cases where a conflict is at an impasse because of stubbornly held widely differing portrayals of the events in the conflict. • Often in conflict situations, the stakeholders do not know many facts and they may not know what they do not know while acting as if they knew everything necessary to know.

3. Analytical Tool • This web architecture is an analytical tool for serious scholarly research. • It locates significant events on earth-based maps and calendrical timelines linked together. Intersecting earth-based maps and calendrical timelines form the core of the method. • The use of calendrical timelines permits the identification of gaps, discrepancies, ambiguities, and uncertainties in the available data. • Archival documents and subsidiary maps and timelines are linked to the core map-timeline array of data.

4. Flexibility • GEOMAT is a flexible web shell for a case study into which the research enters four types of data: • map images • timelines of events • original documents • narratives composed by the researcher. • The analytical process made possible by this electronic format is structured according to cultural ecological epistemology.

5. Epistemology • Events are existential happenings in ecological space-time experienced by actors producing documents. • Actors include not only human agents and features of the built landscapes like cities but also • climatic events such as hurricanes • longer term conditions such as climates themselves and • landscape features including forests, deserts, rivers, and flora and fauna in their distributions and movements. • Documents such as letters, treaties, maps, all types of manuscripts and published writings, official and unofficial.

6. Format • The array of data in a web format permits the reader almost instant access to closely juxtaposed time and space data. • The reader is able to move rapidly and with great ease among large amounts of linked data that in print form would be available only in a cumbersome format. • Interactive maps integrated into the web architecture can portray a dynamic sequence of events over a particular time period.

7. Pilot Studies • Here we show three of the results from pilot studies done in a University of Michigan Winter Term 2005 course that begin to implement this web architecture design. • The next set of slides shows selected static images from these pilot studies. • A link at the end shows the integration of the three pilot studies as a single web architecture developed during that time.

8. PILOT STUDY 1:Ottoman Emperor Suleiman • Arlinghaus’s GEOMAT displays the complexity of Suleiman’s patterns of military conquests. • Link to that work. • The maps that follow are static printouts of dynamic maps captured from the associated web architecture.

9. PS1:Siege of Vienna, 1529

10. PS1:Fall of Rhodes, 1522

11. PS1: Suleiman’s Various Campaigns

12. PS1: Methodology Advantages • For the researcher, making these maps with the associated timelines systematizes the information and makes explicit the amounts of time needed for particular activities and events. • For the reader, • perusing and reading these maps that present a systematic portrayal of a particular conflict, makes possible apprehending the existential time-space in which the events take place. • playing with mutiple technological innovations (animations, applets, sounds, music, virtual reality, 3D models, and so forth) offers a richer context in which to view facts and reinforces those facts in multiple learning dimensions.

13. Pilot Study 2:Abassid Portrayal • Haug’s GEOMAT maps many sorts of data in calendrical time. • Link to that work. • The map that follows is a static printout captured from the associated web architecture.

14. PS2: Tulunid Mints

15. PS2: Methodology Advantages • The portrayal in space of the establishment and operation of royal mints in the Abbasid period, at a time when Abbasid power was being challenged on its periphery, is important in understanding this period of time. • Making maps and timelines and drawing together the information linked to them, partially through animation, made possible unforeseen discoveries and inspired new questions.

16. Pilot Study 3: End of the Ottoman Empire • Larimore’s GEOMAT brings important primary sources to life by integrating them with maps. • Link to that work. • The map that follows is a static printout captured from the associated web architecture.

17. PS3: Secret Agreements Map

18. PS3: Methodology Advantages • Treaties with the Ottoman Empire and the Turkish Republican Nationalists, 1920 and 1923, are important steps in conflict resolution. • Here, the web architecture has been used to draw together treaty texts and contemporary maps with expanding timelines to show fast-moving events. Bringing all these materials together is only possible online.

19. Overall Web Architecture • LINK to pilot web architecture combining the three pilot studies above. • Synthesis of individual web pages into a single shell is important in creating a unified methodology.

20. Notes • Haug’s project was initiated as part of the seminar Maps and Timelines in Play to Resolve Conflicts in the Eastern Mediterranean:  Italy to Israel led by Professor Emerita Ann E. Larimore at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the Winter of 2005. • Center for Middle Eastern and North African Studies, The University of Michigan. GEOMAT course proposed for additional two-year development. • Authors of this document: “The Ottoman Empire: Boundary Transformations in Space and Time.” Solstice: An Electronic Journal of Geography and Mathematics, Winter, 2005, http://www.imagenet.org/ • Authors of this document: Beyond Conflicting Portrayals to Facts in Time and Space, Powerpoint Display presented at SSHA Conference, Nov. 13, 2003. • Larimore (alone) created a Nobel Peace PrizeGEOMAT.