The Atlas Project - Comparing time and place

The Atlas Project is an interdisciplinary mobile proof of concept prototype for spatial and historical exploration of the Hunters Wharf area of Hobart, Australia. The goal of this research is to create a mobile application allowing historical information to be transferred out of the history books and made more easily available for a variety of different tasks. Through a heavily iterative process, a prototype designed through continually discussion amongst three different groups led to the research focussing on comparison of historical maps supported by additional spatiotemporally indexed features as the primary means of interacting with historical data. This paper outlines the iterative development of this prototype, presenting research challenges and solutions encountered during that process, it introduces a novel approach of presenting both spatially and temporally sensitive information satisfying multiple workflows and multiple disciplines. Finally the paper presents many interesting opportunities for future work.published or submitted for publicationis peer reviewe