Toward the Spatial and Temporal Management of Documents: The GéoTopia Platform.

GéoTopia is an online platform designed to promote the publication, distribution, exchange, discussion, and analysis of archive data. As an original feature, it incorporates functions for the spatial and temporal management of relatively informal documents of complex structure, such as images, drawings, and texts. A map interface allows the archiving, consultation, and handling of georeferenced documents by means of a zoom bar and a timeline. Display by map juxtaposition facilitates the comparison of two documents. Two Web services with adjustable parameters, GéoStream and TempoStream, have been developed to aid users with the spatial and temporal indexing of the texts that they integrate into the GéoTopia platform. The result of the spatial indexing is displayed on the base map in the form of thumbnail images showing the spatial references extracted from the text, which the user can validate, either wholly or in part. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]