A Century of French Railways: The Value of Remote Sensing and VGI in the Fusion of Historical Data

Providing long-term data about the evolution of railway networks in Europe may help us understand how European Union (EU) member states behave long-term, and they can comply with present EU recommendations. This paper proposes a methodology for collecting stations, at maximal extent French network, century ago.The expected outcome is geocoded dataset stations (gares), which: (a) links gares to each other, (b) communes, basic administrative level statistical information. Present are well documented public data, but thousands past sparsely recorded, not geocoded, often ignored, except volunteer geographic information (VGI), either collaboratively through Wikipedia or individually. VGI very valuable keeping track that heritage, remote sensing, including aerial photography last chance obtain precise locations. The approach series steps: (1) meta-analysis datasets, (2) three-steps fusion: measure-decision-combination, between (3) computer-assisted geocoding ‘gares’ where fusion fails, (4) integration additional gathered from VGI, (5) automated quality control, indicating questionable. These five families methods, form comprehensive reconstruction process (CARP), which constitutes core this paper. reliable dataset—in geojson format under open license—encompassing (by January 2021) more than 10,700 items linked 7500 35,500 communes France: 60% recorded before. work demonstrates: it possible reconstruct transport past, national scale; value sensing considerable completing sources an historical perspective; (c) be monitored all along (d) ready large variety further studies (demography, density, space coverage, CO2 simulation, environmental policies, etc.).