[OHM] How to publish historical military moves?

[Richard Welty]

On 7/10/15 5:40 AM, Richard Welty wrote:
> On 7/10/15 3:29 AM, André Heughebaert wrote:
>> So my question should be rephrased like this: Is there a
>> standard/infrastructure to publish locations of historical events?
>> This is much broader than just military conflicts, it could be natural
>> events such as volcanos eruptions, earthquakes... or anything else.
>>
> i had started to frame a proposal for this but haven't really made much
> progress.
> i'm out of town right now but will follow up when i get home on sunday.
>
i have a little time to follow up before i head to Thompson Speedway
for the day  (Thompson is a historic facility parts of which i have
documented in OHM).

my own interest is documenting aspects of the American Civil War.
this would include both movements (which need a descriptive language)
and fortifications (Rob Warren has been working on describing WWI
fortifications in OHM already.)

my proposed laboratory would be based on the Maryland Campaign
of 1862 and the Battle of Antietam which represents the major action
of that campaign. this is in part because i have a special interest in it
(i have great-great grandparents who lived on the battlefield when it
occurred) and in part because there is an excellent set of descriptive
maps developed by E. B. Cope of the Army Corp of Engineers that
was released in the early 1900s. the result is that there is detailed
data available for both tactical and operational level movements and
because of the time of publication by the US Government, there are
no intellectual property restrictions.

so what i have in mind roughly is a new relation type, call it

ohm:movement

it should have tags that allow description of what is moving
(company, regiment, division, etc.), and start and end times
for the overall movement.

individual elements of the relation could be nodes (specific points)
or ways (representing, for example, units marching in column or
units deployed into line). these would have times (start and/or end)
as well.

status of units would probably be something to look at. one of the
better known incidents of the Battle of Gettysburg was Stuart's
cavalry ride around the Army of the Potomac. this included Stuart
encountering and capturing a Federal supply train. this would be
something we would probably want to represent - it had a major
impact on the battle (Stuart's movements slowed dramatically
once he had to cope with a train of captured wagons, delaying
his arrival at the battle proper.) the wagons were captured, how
do we represent that change in status?

i'll follow up again, there is a barely started proposal in the wiki
page to which i'll provide a link when i can.

richard

-- 
rwelty at averillpark.net
 Averill Park Networking - GIS & IT Consulting
 OpenStreetMap - PostgreSQL - Linux
 Java - Web Applications - Search


-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: signature.asc
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 841 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/historic/attachments/20150710/34b8e98b/attachment-0001.sig>