ChronoMapia
ChronoMapia is a proposed data visualisation tool. It proposes to enable historians/researchers to record and publish ‘Compilations’ of historic facts or evidential possibilities.
ChronoMapia is a proposed, web-based data visualisation tool – mainly for history / biography researchers – enabling one point compilation of data of famous / historic people. The data can be of various types, such as Encyclopedia information, Biographies, Chronology (Timelines), WorldMaps (Current and Historic), Citations, Traveled-paths, Photos, Videos, Audios, etc.
ChronoMapia is not a working tool Yet! We are, of-course, open to your suggestions and welcome your feedback!
Following page is a concept presentation of ChronoMapia. We are planning and designing about the realisation / the actual development of ChronoMapia.
3 core aspects
Space | Time | Cause. These 3 dimensions are very vital to study any event, activity around us. May it be historic, current or of the future event. In fact, these 3 aspects are found as the description of Maya, the world we experience, in the Vedantic Literature.
ChronoMapia is heavily centred around these 3 aspects. The original idea of ChronoMapia was dreamt based on these very aspects.
Put simply, the users of ChronoMapia would add various data such as an Event’s details, the location of the event and the timeline of the event, along with other wide range of available information. Like an online encyclopedia (e.g. Wikipedia), users can search, cite, study or further research, on the available database. The database will keep on improving, as it’s users update it.
Cartography
देश – The Space Aspect
Core level integration of World Maps is the primary aspect of this proposed tool. Researchers can add historic facts, findings based on world location of the events.
The maps can be current or can be historic. The visualisation of maps is by default kept simplistic for fast and responsive navigation. Users can search based on geographic data or use proximity locations. Various GIS map services are integrated, so you can find relevant maps for your research.
Chronology (Timelines)
Timeline is the second major aspect of this tool. While compiling the historic findings or proven facts, the dates and time of the historic event is recorded and is used to filter, sort, search and show relevant data in a useful manner. This can be very useful to visualise and research temporal data.
For example, most of the readers know these 2 great personalities: Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, the Great King in India and Sir Isaac Newton, the Great scientist. But we hardly notice that they were contemporary, as both lived in 17th century CE.
Events
कारण – The Cause Aspect
Facts or Possibility, researchers can add such event details and share them publicly or to specific groups. Users can cross-check, verify, add details or raise doubts about the information. Once, more and more evidential information is gathered the event gets higher fact rank.
This concept is highly useful to study multiple available versions of some historic events added by multiple users. Researchers can then generalise the information and find out important and interesting information.
How it works?
From hobbyist to the researcher, everyone can benefit from ChronoMapia. It’s simple search tools allow students, school kids or any enthusiast to retrieve quickly most historic data in a simplified and sorted manner. On the other hand experts, historians or researchers can dig down at the historic evidence level and publish their knowledge base to the world.
Simple use case: “Person P was at Location L at Time t!”
The data can be as simple as a historic event added by a user. It can contain the details of a historic person and the details of an event – such as, ‘what happened’, ‘when it happened’ and ‘where’. Users can add many interesting elements to the database such as maps, calendar marks, birthdate, age at that time, images, videos related to the event, links to external websites like ‘Wikipedia’, etc.
Complex use case: “Was Person P really at Location L at Time t?”
Researchers can add multiple versions of historical events based on various evidence and studies; collaboratively or privately. The database, in this way, gets richer with a variety of information. Historians can thereby see the information in a new light.
The advanced A.I. and visualisation tools can enable the user to easily add, search, edit and get meaningful information.
Any where
ChronoMapia is designed to be a Cross-Platform tool. No matter whether you are on a high-end desktop or a simple mobile. ChronoMapia is available on all major desktop and mobile operating systems and also available online. So you can use it in web browsers tool.
Any time
Along with online access, Chronomapia can let you work offline. The ChronoMapia app lets you save and work on your desktop or mobile platform and when you have access to the internet, ChronoMapia will update all the database that is modified. All automatically.
So if you are on a go where you don’t have web access, just update your information using our app, and it will later automaticaly sync to your user account.
Collaborative
The fundamental aspect of knowledge spreading is sharing. ChronoMapia can let you share your research or simple like somebody else’s one.
You can monetise, validate or vote for ongoing research, and add additional records to support the historic data. This lets the ChronoMapia database become richer with authentic content.
Gamification
When you do various activities using ChronoMapia, such as adding information, validating, voting, sharing etc. you are awarded with research points and with various badges and you are granted higher levels of control, as a user of ChronoMapia. You can then monetise, approve, validate the contents published by other users.
History. Now. Simplified.
The advanced data visualisation tools in ChronoMapia allows you to know the historic events in an entertaining visual way. Technologies such as advanced 3D Game engine platforms, immersive VR/MR toolsets, mass-multiuser database, non-linear data-editing tools gives ChronoMapia its robust architecture.
Key elements
Person
Biographical data related to a person (Historic or current). The data include Name, DoB, Place of Birth, Gender, Date of death, age, places lived, and so on.
Location
Location data includes data related to a particular place or location, such as the name of the location, location coordinates, maps, additional information like geographical, climatic etc. Location element can be connected in a case.
Case
A Case is a container where all other elements like a person, time, event and location can be put together. A ‘User’ is associated with a particular version of a case.
User
A User is a real person who logs in to ChronoMapia and uses it. They can search, add information and use the tools. Users can have various stages or permissions to use the tools depending on their ranks, badges.
Event
Event is a detailed account of an event that happened. It can contain a short description, long description, links to evidential records. It can be clubbed with other data in the ‘cases’ element.
Time
Time element stores a particular time. It can be a clock time or calendar date or an era or any combination of these. It can be either a specific point in time or a range/ period in time.
Media
Any types of media files such as images, videos, Gif’s, 3D models, website links, text files, HTML files, scripts, zip files etc.
Ranks, Badges, Tags
Based on your level and contribution to ChronoMapia, the User gets awarded with Badges and other similar tags. This allows you to have advanced permissions to improve the database, such as permission to monetise, administer or authenticate other user’s data.
Who can use ChronoMapia
Hobbyists
Hobbyists can take advantage of the robust search algorithms to learn and read interesting facts of History.
Students
Students can use ChronoMapia to make interesting use to prepare their essays or study.
Research Institutions
Researchers can make history ‘authenticated’ by their studies and cross-validation. This is the real purpose of ChronoMapia.
TESTIMONIALS
What Our Dreamers Say
I am dreaming about this tool, from many years, for my own needs. I personally like maps and timelines. When I could not find any good tool to integrate these things, I dreamt to built one.
I initially worked on concepts using spreadsheets to keep timelines. Now the idea has grown into a full-fledged platform. Waiting for its realisation…
Mahesh Deshpande
Original Dreamer of ChronoMapia
The new-age technologies can really be useful to make this project a one-point solution for all historic studies. Tools like A.I. can crunch the data and present to us with the most interesting facts. Who knows, you may have the ‘Eureka’ moment!
Mohiniraj Bhave
Concept Development
Limitations
The ChronoMapia details presented above are at the concept stage. We are studying the practicality of it. We are already aware of some of our limitations along with our potentials. We are in search of outside help to overcome our limitations.
We think that this project has got a lot of potential in it. With the right kind of support from experts, this can become a big entrepreneur in itself.
We believe that knowledge has to be easily accessible to all!
If you think you can give us the right directions to pursue this goal, please contact us at ‘mahesh<at>advaitastudios<dot>com’
You can make it realise!
If you are willing to contribute to the development of this tool/project, please consider joining hands with us. We are developing a full working architecture of this proposed tool.
Once we get sufficient funds/technical help, we will start the practical development.
The project is being maintained by Mahesh Deshpande located at Pune, India. Mahesh is involved in 3D visualization services and has successfully worked on hundreds of Engineering, architectural and other visualization projects. The founder of Advaita Studios pvt. Ltd, Mahesh, has over 20 years of experience in designing and graphics. The ChronoMapia tool is his idea and dream.