Building schematic of Vienna in the late 1920s

Area of Science:

• Urban history
• Digital humanities
• Geoinformatics

Background:

• Historical urban archives contain valuable data, often in non-machine-readable formats.
• The "Häuser-Kataster der Bundeshauptstadt Wien" (Vienna Building Cadastre) from the 1920s is a key historical resource.
• Previous use involved manual mapping of building periods, limiting broader data integration.

Purpose of the Study:

• To convert the analog Vienna Building Cadastre into a machine-readable dataset.
• To enable the assignment of historical addresses, building periods, and floor counts to a building stock model.
• To facilitate geotagging of historical building data by integrating cadastral community codes.

Main Methods:

• Digitization of the analog "Häuser-Kataster der Bundeshauptstadt Wien".
• Creation of a machine-readable dataset including historical addresses, building periods, and number of floors.
• Integration of late 2010s cadastral community codes for geotagging.

Main Results:

• A newly created, machine-readable dataset of Vienna's historical building information.
• The dataset links historical building attributes with modern cadastral data for enhanced spatial analysis.
• The data is made available under a Creative Commons license to promote reuse.

Conclusions:

• The digitized dataset significantly improves the accessibility and utility of historical urban data.
• This resource supports urban historians and the public in understanding Vienna's built heritage.
• Open data principles are applied to prevent duplicated efforts and foster collaborative research.