The IStG (Institut für vergleichende Städtegeschichte) approached 52°North with a request for assistance in setting up a geodata management platform based on GeoNode. In close collaboration with the IStG, 52°North analyzed the existing geodata architecture, identified, discussed and documented the geodata management requirements for their HiSMaComp research project. The overall goal was to assist the IStG in identifying a solution for managing historical geospatial data and to lay the groundwork for implementing this solution in the near future. Geospatial data in this case includes both raster and vector data as well as reference data. In addition to the actual data, the corresponding metadata also needed be managed.

After an initial setup and deployment, 52°North supported the data loading phase. IStG has already identified a number of interesting use cases that could be developed in the near future using the geodata management platform. For example, a fine-grained search mechanism at the dataset level could help researchers to identify datasets of interest. Side-by-side data visualizations have been identified as an interesting way to visualize historical changes in cities over the centuries.