--- license: mit tags: - historical - maps - France - multi-time - semantic-segmentation - cycleGAN pretty_name: SegmentingFranceAcrossFourCenturies size_categories: - 10K # Segmenting France Across Four Centuries Marta López-Rauhut, Hongyu Zhou, [Loic Landrieu](https://loiclandrieu.com), [Mathieu Aubry](https://mathieuaubry.github.io) [Official GitHub repository](https://github.com/Archiel19/FRAx4.git) Historical maps pre-date satellite imagery, offering insights into centuries of landscape transformation before the 1950s. Unlocking this information can, for example, support the development of sustainable long-term policies. Visually comparing maps from different eras is a complex task. Segmenting the maps into Land Use and Land Cover (LULC) classes makes it easier, but segmenting maps manually is still extremely time-consuming. That is why several works have explored training models to segment historical maps automatically. However, the lack of annotated training data remains a major limitation. We introduce FRAx4, a new dataset of historical maps tailored for analyzing long-term LULC evolution with limited annotations. # Description FRAx4 spans metropolitan France (548,305 km2) across the 18th, 19th, 20th and 21st centuries, and considers four LULC segmentation classes: - **Map collections** - Cassini - État-Major - SCAN50 - Plan IGN - **Segmentation classes**: - *background* - *forest* - *buildings* - *hydrography* - *road* # Dataset content For each **historical** map collection: - 10952 historical map tiles - 470 historical label tiles* - Modern Plan IGN maps adapted to resemble the style of the historical map collection: - 10952 modern map tiles - 10952 modern label tiles Additionally, `settings.json` stores the exact settings that were used to generate the dataset and `tile_extents.csv` provides the west, south, east and north coordinates of each tile. | | Cassini
(Historical) | Cassini
  (Modern)   | | État-Major
(Historical) | État-Major
  (Modern)   | | SCAN50
(Historical) | SCAN50
  (Modern)   | |--------|:-----------------------:|:-------------------:|-|:--------------------------:|:----------------------:|-|:----------------------:|:------------------:| | Map | ![](images/cass_hist.jpeg) | ![](images/cass_mod.jpeg) | | ![](images/em_hist.jpeg) | ![](images/em_mod.jpeg) | | ![](images/scan50_hist.jpeg) | ![](images/scan50_mod.jpeg) | | Labels | ![](images/cass_hist_labels.jpeg) | ![](images/cass_mod_labels.jpeg) | | ![](images/em_hist_labels.jpeg) | ![](images/em_mod_labels.jpeg) | | Not available | ![](images/scan50_mod_labels.jpeg) | **Historical labels are available for a subset of map sheets, for Cassini and État-Major. Namely: Cambrai, Clermont, Dunkerque, LaonNoyon, LePuy, SaintMalo, SaintMalo2 and SaintOmer.* # Dataset structure / ├─ / │ ├─ historical/ │ │ ├─ labels/ │ │ ├─ raster/ │ │ ├─ raster_labeled/ │ ├─ modern/ │ │ ├─ labels/ │ │ ├─ raster/ ... For convenience, `historical/raster_labeled/` contains a duplicate of the labeled subset of `historical/raster/`. # Data sources The dataset is built based on the map layers contained in a QGIS project. Some of these layers are served online using a known protocol (WMS/WFS/TMS...), others had to be downloaded and extracted manually before adding them to the project. We adopt the following structure to identify the map layer sources: > \, [\ | File] - `layer or file name` (*\*) Here, *File* refers to a manually downloaded and extracted layer. The annotation layer sources follow a similar format. ## Map layers - **Cassini**: https://geohistoricaldata.org/geoserver/cassini-ehess/wms, WMS - `CASSINI` (*[EHESS/CRH](http://cassini.ehess.fr/), accessed through [GeoHistoricalData](https://geohistoricaldata.org)*) - **État-Major**: https://data.geopf.fr/wms-r/wms?VERSION=1.3.0, WMS - `GEOGRAPHICALGRIDSYSTEMS.ETATMAJOR40` (*[IGN Géoservices](https://geoservices.ign.fr)*) - **SCAN50**: https://data.geopf.fr/wms-r/wms?VERSION=1.3.0, WMS - `GEOGRAPHICALGRIDSYSTEMS.MAPS.SCAN50.1950` (*[IGN Géoservices](https://geoservices.ign.fr)*) - **Plan IGN**: https://data.geopf.fr/tms/1.0.0/PLAN.IGN/{z}/{x}/{y}.pbf TMS - `PLAN.IGN` (*[IGN Géoservices](https://geoservices.ign.fr)*) ## Annotation layers - **Cassini**: two separate sources (both accessed through *[GeoHistoricalData](https://geohistoricaldata.org)*): - https://geohistoricaldata.org/geoserver/cassini-vectors/wfs - WFS - `cassini-vectors:france_cassini_forets` (*[Vallauri, D. et al.](https://hal.science/hal-01267936 "Vallauri, D., Grel, A., Granier, E., Dupouey, J.L.: Les forêts de Cassini. Analyse quantitative et comparaison avec les forêts actuelles. Rapport Technique, WWF (2012)")*) - https://geohistoricaldata.org/data/cassini.tar.gz (*[Perret, J. et al.](https://doi.org/10.1038/sdata.2015.48 "Perret, J., Gribaudi, M., Barthelemy, M.: Roads and cities of 18th century France. Scientific data 2(1), 1–7 (2015)."), dataset: [Perret, J. et al.](https://doi.org/10.7910/DVN/28674 "Perret, J., Gribaudi, M., Barthelemy, M., Abadie, N., Baciocchi, S., Bertelli, C., Bonin, O., Bordin, P., Costes, B., Cristofoli, P., et al.: The 18th Century Cassini Roads and Cities Dataset. Harvard Dataverse 5 (2015).")*) - File - `cities_and_domains` - File - `hydrography_areas` - File - `hydrography_network` - File - `roads_clean_topology` We manually corrected and completed the annotations. The final version can be found [here](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/b8se1fdi95r7029gzbbdb/cassini_gt_FRAx4.zip?rlkey=mom2rgwjrjenndqr5ztql6pp7&st=3n61xzvm&dl=0). - **État-Major**: https://data.geopf.fr/telechargement/download/BDCARTO-EM//.7z (*[IGN Géoservices](https://geoservices.ign.fr)*) - File - `C_1_2_OCS_ANCIEN_SANS_BATI` - File - `C_2_1_BATIMENT` - File - `B_1_TRONCON_DE_ROUTE` - File - `B_3_TRONCON_DE_COURS_D_EAU` The data is provided as separate archives for each department of France. The sources are listed in https://geoservices.ign.fr/bdcarto-em, but the download links follow the pattern shown above. We employed the sources that were available in April 2024. We manually merged, corrected and completed the annotations, including the addition of a surface hydrology layer for our test set. The final version can be found [here](https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/puuxos9s8p5gbzrz610ts/etat-major_gt_FRAx4.zip?rlkey=2ytmb86oi7t5n3hym1zc9ta3l&st=md3r1wy9&dl=0). - **SCAN50**: we found no annotations for these maps. - **Plan IGN**: annotations are derived from the vectorized map layers, by isolating the geographical features that belong to each class. ## Map sheet mosaic We downloaded the map sheet vertex coordinates of the Cassini collection from the GeoHistoricalData portal. Dataset tiles are obtained by subdividing each map sheet with a minimum tile size constraint (in pixels). - **Cassini sheet mosaic**: https://geohistoricaldata.org/geoserver/cassini-ehess/wfs, WFS - `cassini-vectors:france_cassini_table_assemblage` (*[GeoHistoricalData](https://geohistoricaldata.org)*) # Citation Coming soon # Acknowledgements This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC project DISCOVER, number 101076028) and by ANR project sharp ANR-23-PEIA-0008 in the context of the PEPR IA. This work was also granted access to the HPC resources of IDRIS under the allocation 2024-AD011015314 made by GENCI.