Bibliographic webmap: The Physical Landscape of Britain and Northern Ireland

Abstract

In this article, we present the development of a web mapping application as part of the 'Physical Landscape of Britain and Northern Ireland' project. There are a large number of sources for information and data on the geomorphology of the British landscape including academic journals, books, unpublished student dissertations and third-party reports, however there remains no single central repository to query the extent of such knowledge. This project, sponsored by the British Society for Geomorphology, has a long-term aim of collating a bibliography on the full extent of published and unpublished research on the geomorphology of Britain and Northern Ireland, ultimately highlighting 'gaps' in our knowledge and identifying topics and areas for future investigation. The first phase of the project involved the development of a web application that allows end-users to search for bibliographic references using an interactive map. Here we outline the implementation of a spatial database, a database front-end and a web mapping application built using open source software and open data. Data for pilot areas have been entered; a further phase of the project will populate the database for other areas. © 2013 Copyright M.J. Smith.