This project is research-driven and concerned with the construction of geographic information-based spatio-temporal databases. Over the course of twenty years, Academia Sinica has worked to accumulate over 850,000 maps of mainland China and Taiwan, and over 1,200,000 aerial photographs. In addition to compiling a big database, this project builds ad hoc search systems based on the metadata extracted from the materials in order to integrate GIS resources that used to be dispersed in different institutions. These efforts constitute two major systems, the Federated Search System for the Digital Archive of Maps and the Integrated Query System of Aerial Photos.

In 2021, this project will digitize 6,500 maps, with 12,000 items of metadata obtained through exchange schemes with other institutions. A selection of 15,000 maps and remote sensing images will undergo value-adding such as by coordinate geo-referencing for further application. Those georeferenced maps and remote sensing images will then be published to 150 web map services. The project also seeks to improve the services of its websites (Federated Search System for the Digital Archive of Maps, Integrated Query System of Taiwan Aerial Photos, A Century of Taiwan Maps, Online Map Recalibration Services, and Community-collaborated Story Map Platform) by building effective interconnections among these systems through API and web services. These efforts will be promoted through data licensing, academic conferences, exhibitions, workshops and keynote speeches, for the benefit of academic research, education and cultural business.

Existing archives and technologies will be applied to advancing what is known as "Spatial Humanities," and this will operate in tandem with our attempt to practice crowdsourcing, in order to flesh out a valued-added mapping system allowing multidimensional narratives in terms of time and space. The spatial-temporal coordinate structure of information will function as a powerful "cyberinfrastructure" to productively spatialize and visualize research on aspects of Taiwan history and culture. In hopes of improving local cultural studies, community development and environmental protection, the Community Story Maps Platform will enable users to expand layers of GIS information in time and freely employ modes of spatial narrative to map out their stories. Also, this project will develop a technology that uses deep learning to automatically extract GIS Infomation (layers) from our archived map images.