Forgotten aerial photos - new gold mine for researchers
Millions of aerial photos from 60 countries taken between 1930s – 1980s are now becoming a gold mine for researchers in various fields. This is thanks to a research project in which a previously inaccessible archive is digitised and made freely available as historical maps – a kind of “historical Google Earth”.
The project is led by the economists Andreas Madestam and Anna Tompsett at Stockholm University, together with partners from Berkeley, Caltech, Stanford, and MIT. The data material reveals information that could be crucial for our understanding in terms of how these countries have developed. The data will be made freely available for all non-commercial use and open up endless research possibilities for researchers. A new film is made about the project and the new research infrastructure.
“What's exciting about this archive is that we can actually go back to the 1940s and see what the world really looked like”, says Anna Tompsett, Associate Professor at the Department of Economics.
“We want to understand ways to alleviate poverty. But there's probably a lot of questions out there that we can't imagine ourselves, that the archive will be able to speak to”, says Andreas Madestam, Professor of Economics, Department of Economics.
Watch the film on youtube:
Old aerial photos - new gold mine for researchers
Read an article about the project:
"Old aerial photos provide a new outlook on 20th century history"