Turning a Thousand (or so) Words into a Map Charlie Greenbacker @greenbacker

“Word map of Seattle, 1971“ by Seattle Municipal Archives (https://flic.kr/p/4VCgqw) CC-BY 2.0

What is CLAVIN?

• A geoparser

• Turns text into maps

• The “Springfield Problem”

• Apache License

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2.0

What’s New?

• Sep 2014: v2.0 release

• Simpler & richer API

• Full hierarchical ancestry

• Support for structured data

• Subtle bug fixes

• Core algorithmic tweaks

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Who Uses CLAVIN?

• MIT MediaMeter CLIFF

• cliff.mediameter.org

• Altamira Lumify

• lumify.io

• Major oil & gas company

• Major military organization

“Sailor marks a map.“ by Official U.S. Navy Page (https://flic.kr/p/dg65za) CC-BY 2.0

What’s Next?

• More algorithmic tweaks

• MITIE integration

• Enhance performance

• Improve multilingual capabilities

• Project governance?

“Map showing Japanese-Chinese warfre [sic] now in Shanghai“by http://maps.bpl.org (https://flic.kr/p/55mVic) CC-BY 2.0

clavin.io Charlie Greenbacker @greenbacker

“Compass Study“ by Calsidyrose (https://flic.kr/p/8vehvb) CC-BY 2.0