Project for mapping the London blitz, how useful might it be to your family history project?

There is currently a joint JISC and TNA (The National Archives) Funded Project being led by Dr Kate Jones at Portsmouth University which is focused on Mapping the impact of the WWII Blitz on London.

“The mapped data will be used to construct an interactive web-mapping application and  a mobile phone application that can be used as you walk around the streets of London.”

The Project website deals with the GIS and Infrastructure technicalities but as with all JISC projects there is not much reported about what the end user benefits will be. It would be good if there were strategic gains and at least co-ordinated outcomes that can be leveraged and integrated.

We have asked and wait to hear some more, isolated data sets are that much more useful if they can be layered and used on publicly available and deployable tools rather than GIS systems the average user does not have the knowledge of or familiarity with.

Hopefully there is at least an open access data policy, after all in these cash stricken times it is ourselves as tax payers that are funding these projects, whether the purse is TNA’s or JISC

Here is the Stepping into Time: Mapping the London Blitz Project Blog if you would like to explore some more details, will keep you posted on what we hear back…