NY based non-profit, cultureNOW focuses on documenting historical, architectural and art assets in the US. A database that has been collected over the last 20 years is now being collated into a new platform and a phone app, called Museum Without Walls, to showcase these cultural assets to the public.

One of my projects has been to research and implement new technological aspects to the platform such as image recognition, georeferencing historical maps and creating hazard maps (using GIS) that cross reference the map of our cultural assets with climatological events such as sea level rise and wildfires, to see how much in danger they are.

Separately, using documentation from cartographers such as Nancy Seasholes and GIS datasets from NOAA, I was available to track the changing landscape of Boston from 1630 CE - 2022 CE, represented here (below) against the most current satellite imagery from Google, to show which existing landmarks exist on reclaimed land.

The Maps shown (above, left, below) are georeferenced historical maps such as the Viele Waterways map from 1865, Ratzer Plan from 1700s, Fisk Maps and Maps of Boston. In the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries, cartographers used available tools to come up the most accurate geographical maps of the time. However, now with satellite imagery, we understand the inaccuracies of these maps. Using, image editing and GIS software, I was able to georeference these historical maps to overlay on current satellite imagery to give a sense of what the maps truly represented in their times.

Aside from working on historical maps, I also used NOAA and USGS datasets to represent the frequency of occurrence of wildfires across the US in the last 133 years and, the rising seas and changing shorelines in the 2050s and 2100.

I used the sea-level rise data for all of the US coastline, from Texas and Florida to Maine in the north, and all of the west coast. Shown here is the change in coastline in Boston and below, in Florida.