#historicalgis — Public Fediverse posts

#DniproHesFlood
🛰️ Dam-break modelling with GRASS GIS

I used the r.damflood module in GRASS GIS on a historical scenario:
the destruction of the DniproHES dam by Soviet forces in August 1941 during their retreat from Ukraine.

I reconstructed a pre-war DEM of the Dnipro River from old topographic maps, modeled the dam structure, and created a breach raster.

Using r.damflood, I simulated the propagation of the flood wave over the first 24 hours after the dam explosion.
Based on this model, I generated a visualization showing the wave dynamics.

All tools used are fully open-source.
The results have not yet been published anywhere.

#Geospatial #GIS #HistoricalGIS #DigitalHistory #Cartography #OpenData #DataAnalysis #DEM #TerrainModeling #Hydrology #DamBreak #Dnipro #DniproHES #Ukraine #Zaporizhzhia #QGIS #SAGAGIS #GRASS #FOSS4G

Geospatial analysis and modeling is not only about:
1. downloading Copernicus data,
2. generating pretty maps,
3. calling it “analysis”.

In reality it often means years of collecting and reconciling heterogeneous data from different eras: digitizing historical maps, fixing coordinate systems, validating geometry through indirect evidence. This stage can easily take more time than all later modeling.

The images show how I digitized and georeferenced 1920s–1940s topographic maps of the lower Dnipro region. After transforming them into a unified coordinate system, I used them to reconstruct the pre-flood terrain (before the Kakhovka Reservoir).
That DEM later became the basis for modeling the 1941 DniproHES dam-break wave.

…This data-preparation phase alone took me almost four years.

#Geospatial #GIS #HistoricalGIS #DigitalHistory
#RemoteSensing #Cartography #OpenData #DataAnalysis #DEM #TerrainModeling #Hydrology #DamBreak #Dnipro #DniproHES #Ukraine #Zaporizhzhia #QGIS #SAGAGIS #GRASS #FOSS #DniproHesFlood

@seav Thank you so much for pointing me to the CShapes package! I’ve been looking for shape files of the late Ottoman Empire for years.

#HistoricalGIS #ShapeFiles #OttomanEmpire #DigitalHumanities #rstats

Historical Geospatial Dataset Of Cyprus From British Administration Maps Of The 19th Century
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https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dib.2024.111084 <-- shared paper
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https://kitchener.hua.gr/en <-- storybook / historic maps
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[as a ‘colonial’ myself (New Zealand), I have a fascination with this sort of history – and throw in some early-ish survey and national cartography not long after Cyprus was ceded by the Ottomans…]
#GIS #spatial #mapping #Cyprus #hydrology #hydrography #landcover #population #demographics #survey #cartography #French #tradition #triangulation #national #colonial #British #administration #Kitchener #roads #infrastructure #cultural #history #historic #census #spatiotemporal #HistoricalGIS #takingstock