Atlas and remote imagery sensing describe the landscape caused by either natural processes or human activities in a period, annotate what happened in the specific space-time condition, and reflect the culture in a place. To review those maps of the same place for different periods will assist us in understanding the change in environment, society, and culture.

From another viewpoint, to review those maps in different places with the same period will help recognize the change in environmental characteristics in different places. If this project could integrate and analyze the material effectively, that would not only become powerful and objective evidences to help us reconstruct the past, but also help us build a 3-Dimensional Information Model to spread, record, and reduce the evolution of human-land relationship.

On the basis of the integrated space-time framework, this project can rehabilitate history, simulate the change of evolution and forecast trends in the future. In an advanced stage, it can be overlaid with various subject themes to generalize complex information in the maps which can provide integrated multi-dimensional information and related analysis more efficiently. The project suggests this approach because it can increase the abilities for analysis and recognition.

<source: National Digital Archives Program web site>