OOPS

At the new year, I thought that I had resuscitated my GIS. Not so. The shapefile still needed work around the edges. As in any project, its those outstanding edges that were the most difficult.

When that task was finally complete and I tried to populate it with my data file, I noticed that many polling places were showing no results. This could not be the case, as I had notes on the handful of polling places for which I did not have data. A meticulous review of my Project_Master file indicated that perhaps 1/8 of my data was missing. How? Why? Did I lose data in the conversion for xls to cvs (required by QGIS?

Fortunately, after much searching, I was able to find an uncorrupted backup file. I made a spreadsheet of the missing polling place data and am presently integrating the "lost" data into my Project_Master file. Doing so, I uncovered another problem. The results for the second national election in 1924 were jumbled. I will have to diagnose that problem before I continue.

The creation of the original GIS map took +3000 hours; creating the data file (not counting the time collecting data) took a further +2000. I am comforted that all of this work was not lost!

Happy New Year!

This evening, I finished restoring my GIS of constituencies (Wahlorten). What a hectic two weeks. It would never have been possible if my daughter and son-in-law had time off from work and were able to watch our granddaughter.

I used a combination of Flur and Gemärkung boundaries available for download from the Lower Saxony Geodata Office. These took a little adjusting and I had to be careful when combining two Gemärkungen into one Wahlort.

My next task will be to check for any input mistakes on my part and to verify that all of the constituencies are represented. Then I need to clean up the banks of the Elbe, Weser and Ems, along with the North Sea coast. Time permitting, I will try to recreate the water details that I drew in my original GIS.

Lastly, I need to make sure that all of the polling place cites and town are present, as well as census places in each constituency where voters fond multiple towns vote in one location. This is all a huge relief, preparatory to returning to my spatial analysis of votes cast for the German Democratic Party 1919-1933 as part of my current Theodor Tantzen essay.

Starting over

Working through all of my saved files, the only saved georeferenced shapefiles that i shapefiles have of my constituencies is incomplete. This means that I ahve to recreate EVERYTHING. It took me well north of 500 hours to accurately draw the shapes. I was mapping 1:10,00 scaleso thhat I could accurately get every field annd watercourse. Ths was perrhaps overkiut I wanted to be accuate as possible. Fortunately, as I noted in my article on creating the GIS, by the time that I had finished my work the Niedersachsen had published online a Geodata portal with many useful layers. Their 'Gemeinde" layer did me no good as the villages had passed through several consolidations since my era. They did, however, have layers for "Flur" and "Gemärkung". Using these, I am able to recreate the old constiuencie shapes although with less exactitude (1:50,000). I am maybe 1/4 of the way through. With luck, I will have sufficient time over spring breeak to comolete the task. I need it so that I can start analyzing Left Liberal voting patters.