Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
references. Second, be very clear that our main source of funding remains
grants, not commercial contracts, but the kind of evidence presented
here, showing we were delivering wider economic and social benefits,
has been crucial to obtaining grants. The other benefits of this kind of
activity are further discussed in the conclusion. Third, the case studies
presented here are of course all drawn from the experience of one project,
but that experience is quite diverse, and each case study ends with some
more general lessons.
The fourth and possibly the largest caveat is that the case studies here
do not include the largest audience for our work, the users of our web-
site, A Vision of Britain through Time, as originally funded by the UK
National Lotery. Courtesy of Google Analytics, we can supply impres-
sive statistics of raw volume, such as that the site was used by 1,811,265
different people (“unique users”) in the year from June 2012 to May 2013.
However, because the site is completely open access, we know relatively
litle about who these people are and can only infer their motives. The
available usage data are further analyzed in the third of three papers on
our rebuilding of the Great Britain HGIS,
1
but the focus here is on profes-
sional audiences we have worked closely with.
Demogr aphy and Health
Most national HGIS projects at least started with the goal of providing
a framework for the analysis of historical census and vital registration
data. This is certainly true of both the Great Britain HGIS and the U.S.
National Historical GIS. Both projects not only created computerized
boundaries for the main demographic reporting units but also assembled
large bodies of historical statistics. However, my aim here is not to re-
view the very clear contribution of HGIS to historical demography but
to explore what more needs to be done to make it useful to nonhistorical
demographers, especially to contemporary medical researchers, and,
more importantly, to explain why HGIS can make a large contribution
to modern medical research.
Twenty years or so ago, the growing number of retired people, espe-
cially those aged over eighty, produced near panic among policy mak-
ers in advanced societies because they were seen as an inevitable large
