Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map

There is an increasing interest in the conservation of historical cities since they provide a link to the roots of their communities and bring cultural and economic benefits to their inhabitants. In this paper, we present an approach to promote the knowledge of the UNESCO World Heritage city of San...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Fernando Pérez Nava, Isabel Sánchez Berriel, Alejandro Pérez Nava, Virginia Gutiérrez Rodríguez, Jesús Pérez Morera
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Universitat Politècnica de València 2022-01-01
Series:Virtual Archaeology Review
Subjects:
Online Access:https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/var/article/view/15322
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1850215402001399808
author Fernando Pérez Nava
Isabel Sánchez Berriel
Alejandro Pérez Nava
Virginia Gutiérrez Rodríguez
Jesús Pérez Morera
author_facet Fernando Pérez Nava
Isabel Sánchez Berriel
Alejandro Pérez Nava
Virginia Gutiérrez Rodríguez
Jesús Pérez Morera
author_sort Fernando Pérez Nava
collection DOAJ
description There is an increasing interest in the conservation of historical cities since they provide a link to the roots of their communities and bring cultural and economic benefits to their inhabitants. In this paper, we present an approach to promote the knowledge of the UNESCO World Heritage city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna in the Canary Islands, Spain. The city was founded in 1496 and has a unique value due to its urban design. In this work, we present a web application that allows a user to locate places and addresses of the current city in its first known map authored by Leonardo Torriani in the 16th century. To build this application we have georeferenced the ancient map in the current cartography. The georeferencing process needs the identification of homologous ground control points in the coordinate systems of both the old map and the current cartography, and the definition of a transform between them. Best results were obtained with the non-parametric natural transform interpolation leading to a global mean error of 4.9 m that reduces to 3.2 m in the historical city centre. To provide a fast response to the user of the web application, a technique to precompute offline the natural transform is presented. The web application has a simple front-end where the user fills the current city address in a form. This activates a query to obtain the geographical coordinates of the address that are transformed to map coordinates using the pre-computed transformation. These map coordinates are used by a map viewer in the front end that locates the user address in the ancient map. To test the performance of the web application, the load of the system has been analysed obtaining a latency of 1.4 s in 50 concurrent users. Results show that the web application provides accurate results in the historical centre while providing satisfactory response times. Highlights: - This study investigates the issue of georeferencing the first historic map (16th century) of San Cristóbal de La Laguna and the possibility to geolocate current city addresses. - By using the natural interpolation method, the georeferencing errors were diminished below 4 m in most of the historic city. - A user-friendly web application has been designed which precisely locates current directions in the old map providing a valuable tool for the promotion of the heritage of the city.
format Article
id doaj-art-e6395a030640488797df518acd958668
institution OA Journals
issn 1989-9947
language English
publishDate 2022-01-01
publisher Universitat Politècnica de València
record_format Article
series Virtual Archaeology Review
spelling doaj-art-e6395a030640488797df518acd9586682025-08-20T02:08:38ZengUniversitat Politècnica de ValènciaVirtual Archaeology Review1989-99472022-01-011326627510.4995/var.2022.153228952Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century mapFernando Pérez Nava0Isabel Sánchez Berriel1Alejandro Pérez Nava2Virginia Gutiérrez Rodríguez3Jesús Pérez Morera4Universidad de La LagunaUniversidad de La LagunaUniversidad de La LagunaUniversidad de La LagunaUniversidad de La LagunaThere is an increasing interest in the conservation of historical cities since they provide a link to the roots of their communities and bring cultural and economic benefits to their inhabitants. In this paper, we present an approach to promote the knowledge of the UNESCO World Heritage city of San Cristóbal de La Laguna in the Canary Islands, Spain. The city was founded in 1496 and has a unique value due to its urban design. In this work, we present a web application that allows a user to locate places and addresses of the current city in its first known map authored by Leonardo Torriani in the 16th century. To build this application we have georeferenced the ancient map in the current cartography. The georeferencing process needs the identification of homologous ground control points in the coordinate systems of both the old map and the current cartography, and the definition of a transform between them. Best results were obtained with the non-parametric natural transform interpolation leading to a global mean error of 4.9 m that reduces to 3.2 m in the historical city centre. To provide a fast response to the user of the web application, a technique to precompute offline the natural transform is presented. The web application has a simple front-end where the user fills the current city address in a form. This activates a query to obtain the geographical coordinates of the address that are transformed to map coordinates using the pre-computed transformation. These map coordinates are used by a map viewer in the front end that locates the user address in the ancient map. To test the performance of the web application, the load of the system has been analysed obtaining a latency of 1.4 s in 50 concurrent users. Results show that the web application provides accurate results in the historical centre while providing satisfactory response times. Highlights: - This study investigates the issue of georeferencing the first historic map (16th century) of San Cristóbal de La Laguna and the possibility to geolocate current city addresses. - By using the natural interpolation method, the georeferencing errors were diminished below 4 m in most of the historic city. - A user-friendly web application has been designed which precisely locates current directions in the old map providing a valuable tool for the promotion of the heritage of the city.https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/var/article/view/15322historical mapcultural heritagegeoreferencinggeoportalgeolocation
spellingShingle Fernando Pérez Nava
Isabel Sánchez Berriel
Alejandro Pérez Nava
Virginia Gutiérrez Rodríguez
Jesús Pérez Morera
Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
Virtual Archaeology Review
historical map
cultural heritage
georeferencing
geoportal
geolocation
title Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
title_full Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
title_fullStr Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
title_full_unstemmed Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
title_short Promoting the heritage of the city of San Cristobal de La Laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
title_sort promoting the heritage of the city of san cristobal de la laguna through a temporal link with a 16th century map
topic historical map
cultural heritage
georeferencing
geoportal
geolocation
url https://polipapers.upv.es/index.php/var/article/view/15322
work_keys_str_mv AT fernandopereznava promotingtheheritageofthecityofsancristobaldelalagunathroughatemporallinkwitha16thcenturymap
AT isabelsanchezberriel promotingtheheritageofthecityofsancristobaldelalagunathroughatemporallinkwitha16thcenturymap
AT alejandropereznava promotingtheheritageofthecityofsancristobaldelalagunathroughatemporallinkwitha16thcenturymap
AT virginiagutierrezrodriguez promotingtheheritageofthecityofsancristobaldelalagunathroughatemporallinkwitha16thcenturymap
AT jesusperezmorera promotingtheheritageofthecityofsancristobaldelalagunathroughatemporallinkwitha16thcenturymap