A Subject-Oriented Historical GIS (the Example of Barnaul Infrastructure in the Late 18th – Early 20th Centuries)

Abstract

The article studies the infrastructure of Barnaul city in the second half of the 18th - early 20th centuries. The study aims at acquiring new systematic knowledge about the way the infrastructure of West Siberian cities developed, the influence of infrastructural objects on city ecology, the correlation of demographical and ecological factors influencing the city development and urban population reproduction. The study rests on an extensive source database including written, cartographic and photo documents stored mainly in the state archives of Altai Krai and Tomskaya Oblast as well as a number of published sources. The methodological basis of the work is the systemic and interdisciplinary approaches, the general scientific as well as traditional historical research methods. Geoinformation analysis based on the subject-oriented historical geoinformation system created is used as the main way to obtain new information. The article analyzes spatial aspects of the city infrastructure and ecological factors of its development and demonstrates changes in the disposition of infrastructural objects in the late 19th – early 20th centuries. The article concludes that the negative impact of ecologically unfriendly city objects was exerted mainly through aggravating sanitary environment and ecosystems.