Spatial Data

Feeling the need to get down-and-dirty with some spatial analysis of your own? Great. There are two ways to access Imperiia Project spatial data.

Dataverse Shapefiles

The spatial data generated through the project is published in the Imperiia Dataverse. Each spatial dataset is provided as a zipped shapefile and is accompanied by a metadata document with usage notes and attribute definitions. If you are serious about doing your own spatial analysis, you will want to use the dataverse shapefiles, which are in the original custom geographic coordinate system: 

Projection: Equidistant_Conic
false_easting: 0.0
false_northing: 0.0
central_meridian: 37.5
standard_parallel_1: 47.0
standard_parallel_2: 62.0
latitude_of_origin: 0.0
Linear Unit: Meter (1.0)

Geographic Coordinate System: GCS_Geographic Coordinate System
Angular Unit: Degree (0.0174532925199433)
Prime Meridian: Greenwich (0.0)
Datum: D_WGS84
Spheroid: WGS84
Semimajor Axis: 6378137.0
Semiminor Axis: 6356752.314245
Inverse Flattening: 298.257223560493

As it happens, there is a longstanding tradition of using an equidistant conic projection to deal with the space of the Russian Empire. According to Maurizio de Felice of MadMappers (whose peerless expertise in working with historical maps made this project possible),

the equidistant conic projection has been chosen in Russia as a good compromise since scale is the same along all meridians (parallels are constantly spaced) and distortion is constant along any given parallel (it is free of distortion only along the two standard parallels). In practice this projection is neither conformal nor equal area but it is a compromise in distortion between equal-area and conformal conic projections which suites Russia well due to the east-west extent of its territory.

Please keep in mind that the lengths and areas calculated and included with these original data sets are based on the shapefile features themselves. There is a great deal of information in archival and published sources describing the size and geometries of Russia's administrative units: much of that information has been collected and will, in coming months, be published in the dataverse.

WorldMap Downloads

In addition, some spatial datasets can be downloaded directly from the Imperiia Map (where they appear as map layers). These datasets have been reprojected into WGS1984 in order to play nicely with the WorldMap platform. (All geometry calculations, XY coordinates, and spatial analyses were conducted in the custom equidistant conic projection prior to reprojection into WGS1984.)

The WorldMap platform allows layer downloads in the following formats: zipped shapefile, GML 2.0, GML 3.1.1, CSV, Excel, GeoJSON, GeoTIFF, JPEG, PDF, PNG, KML.

To see if a layer is available for download, right-click the layer in the Imperiia Map table of contents. Select "Share Layer". The individual layer page will open. All available download formats will be listed in the upper right of the page.