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About

Web site

This web portal showcases our catalog of georeferenced historical maps using a range of tools. You can easily find the maps you need using the filters provided. You can also download the entire catalog directly into QGIS via a dedicated plugin, which is described on the QGIS page.

This is a collaborative project, so your contributions are important. If you would like to share a georeferenced historical map, please visit the contribute tab.

COVADEO

The COVADEO project began in 2019 with the collection of historical maps of the Bourgogne–Franche-Comté region. All these maps show road networks. 480 maps were collected initially, and all have been georeferenced. They come from various sources, such as departmental archives, municipal libraries and Gallica (a Bibliothèque nationale de France website). They were then stored in a geo-historical database designed for optimal storage of and access to the data. The idea behind the project is to associate a serious game with this database to ensure the vectorization of the exisiting road network on the historical maps. These vectorized data will enable quantitative and qualitative analyses of how the networks have evolved over time. The project is supported by Bourgogne–Franche-Comté Regional Council, Marie and Louis Pasteur University, and the ThéMA research center.

The team

The COVADEO project is led by Claire LAGESSE, associate profesor at Marie and Louis Pasteur University, TheMA UMR CNRS 6049. Her research focuses on the construction and analysis of complex spatial networks. She studies in depth the morphological structures of road graphs in order to explore different cities around the world from this angle. Her thesis, "Lire les lignes de la ville. Méthodologie de caractérisation des graphes spatiaux" (2015) proposes a methodology to analyze them. She also works on geohistorical data, observing the diachronic evolution of road networks. Her research takes a spatio-temporal approach, supported by multidisciplinary collaborations with urban planners, architects, anthropologists, geographers, physicists, and computer scientists.

Since the project began in 2019, several students have joined the team for various lengths of time:

  • Hanae EL GOUJ, PhD student from 2019-2023
  • Christian RINCÓN-ACOSTA, graduate student, 3-month internship in 2018 and 2019
  • Émilie MATHIS, graduate student, 3-month internship in 2020
  • Émeline VIÉRON-LEPOUTRE, graduate student, 3-month internship in 2021
  • Clément SEBASTIAO, graduate student, 3-month internship in 2023
  • Léa RAUTURIER, graduate student, 2-month student project in 2023
  • Ollo SIB, graduate student, 3-month internship in 2023
  • Lamiae BOURAQIA, undergraduate, 2-month internship in 2023
  • Charlélie TIERCELET, , undergraduate, 3-month internship in 2024 and 2025
  • Matis CHIAVUZZO, undergraduate, 4-month internship in 2026

Web site & web platform development:

  • Charlélie Tiercelet (2025) and Matis Chiavuzzo (2026) developed this website with the help of Théo Satabin (IGN engineer) and Claire Lagesse.
  • Makina Corpus developed the COVADEO serious game under the supervision of Claire Lagesse (2019–2026). Matis Chiavuzzo (2026) and Nicolas Lepy (CNRS engineer) later enhanced it, with Claire Lagesse.

The environment

The entire project has been conducted at ThéMA, a research center specialised in theoretical and quantitative geography, located in Besançon, France. The center is organised around three thematic areas: (1) Landscape and living environment, (2) Mobility, city and transport, (3) Territorial intelligence. The research conducted within ThéMA focuses on the design, development, use, and promotion of quantitative methods to analyze spatial structures and dynamics. It covers a wide spectrum, from fundamental to applied research, including:

  • Theoretical approaches: urban models, formalization of stakeholder organizations, ontologies of geographic information.
  • Original protocols for data acquisition in the field: surveys and sensors in the Arctic environment, capture of mobility using ICTs.
  • The design and development of spatial modelling methods: spatial and landscape metrics, analysis of transport networks, simulation and territorial forecasting tools.

This work is intended to assist decision-making in spatial planning, to improve living environments and to implement sustainable development. It involves the development of software and territorial observatories, tools for which the center has specific know-how.