历史GIS的研究现状和发展趋势

历史地理信息系统(历史GIS)属于地理信息系统(GIS)与历史学相结合的交叉研究领域,它有机地集成了GIS的技术方法、地理学家的空间视角和历史学家的时间视角,量化历史时期的地理过程并构建相应的时空模型,为面向未来的科学预测提供研究基础。历史GIS兴起于20世纪90年代中期,给GIS学科、历史地理学和历史学都带来了新的研究机遇与活力,并表现出强劲的发展势头,但也存在一些尚待解决的问题。近年来,历史GIS向社会提供了日益丰富的历史地理信息服务,并逐渐跨越系统的技术层面,向着科学层面纵深发展。本文通过对国内外相关文献的梳理与分析,回顾了历史GIS产生的背景,从数字化、数据模型、数据库建设与系统开发、空间分析和可视化5个方面综述了国内外历史GIS的研究现状。最后,从历史资料的空间化与数字化、历史地理时空大数据、历史地理空间框架构建及历史地理信息服务、历史地理时空过程及模型构建、历史地理信息科学和技术学科体系的形成等角度展望了历史GIS的发展趋势,以期为历史GIS未来的发展提供新的研究思路。

A Review of Historical GIS and Its Trend

Historical Geographical Information System and Science (HGIS) is a new interdiscipline subject between Geographical Information System (GIS) and History. The geographical process in historical period has been studied quantitatively and the geographical process model is built accordingly through HGIS to provide research basis on which to make future-oriented scientific predictions, by combining the technical methods of GIS, the space perspective of geographers, and the time perspective of historians together organically. HGIS emerged in the mid-1990s and has been bringing opportunities and dynamism to the development of GIS, History, and Historical Geography. HGIS maintains a sound momentum of growth, meanwhile there are some unresolved issues with it. In recent years, HGIS is overcoming systematic technical obstacles and developing in the direction of science, offering increasingly rich HGIS service. This article reviews the generation progress and the early practice of HGIS, andthen summarizes the current research status of HGIS from five aspects: digitization, data model, database and its system, spatial analysis, and visualization, by combing and analyzing the related literatures at home and abroad. In the last part of this article, the trends of HGIS are analyzed and summarized from several aspects: the spatialization and digitization of historical data, historical geographical spatio-temporal big data, the construction of historical geo-spatial framework and its service, the research on historical geographical spatio-temporal process and the construction of its model, and the formation of the discipline system of historical geographical information science and technology. These trends provide new research ideas for the future of HGIS.