CatMapper
CatMapper is a powerful new research tool that helps researchers identify, align, and merge diverse datasets across complex dynamic categories with greater speed and accuracy than manual processes.
Project Details
Scientists and policymakers often bring together data from many different sources to study pressing social issues (e.g., economic change, migration, war, political movements, and health and well-being). However, bringing together data from different datasets is challenging when datasets use different labels for the same thing or use the same label for different things. CatMapper is an online application that helps users overcome the challenge of translating across datasets. With CatMapper’s tools, users can unlock and combine data in new ways to answer pressing social questions. This project creates a version of CatMapper that includes user-tested online tools and builds a community of users who can benefit from them. The project also provides educational and research opportunities for students.
CatMapper consists of two applications that are used to connect categories often used in the social sciences. SocioMap focuses on thousands of categories for ethnicities, languages, religions, and administrative districts. ArchaMap focuses on thousands of categories used for material artifacts and sites in archaeology. To help link datasets together, CatMapper provides four sets of tools to: (1) explore information about specific categories, (2) translate categories across datasets, (3) bring together datasets in new ways, and (4) store and share translations of and merges between different datasets for use by others. CatMapper includes self-guided tutorials for researchers, students, and other interested members of the public wishing to learn how to connect data across diverse data streams to answer scientific questions. CatMapper is freely available to users across academia, industry, non-governmental organizations, and government institutions. It includes a user-friendly interface to facilitate analyses of population data at multiple spatial and temporal scales.
Partners: Santa Clara University
Research Team
- Sharon Hsiao, Santa Clara University
- Harsha Kasi, Santa Clara University
Funding
2023 National Science Foundation, Human Networks and Data Science, Infrastructure Program (HNDS-I) - CatMapper: User-friendly Tools for Integrating Data by Complex Dynamic Categories
2022 National Science Foundation, Cultural Anthropology Program - SocioMap: A Tool for Exploring, Translating, and Merging Data Across Complex Sociopolitical Categories
Outcomes
The CatMapper tool is online and available here. catmapper.org
2024 Hsiao, Sharon, Harsha Kasi, Dan Hruschka, Robert Bischoff, and Matthew A. Peeples.CatMapper: user interface support for large complex categories and semantic data exploration. In Human Factors in Design, Engineering, and Computing. Edited by Tareq Ahram and Waldermar Karwowski. Applied Human Factors in Ergonomics International Conference Proceedings. AHFE Open Access, vol 159. AHFE International, USA.http://doi.org/10.54941/ahfe1005589
2024 Hruschka, Daniel, Yi-Yun Cheng, I-Han Hsiao, Robert Bischoff, Matthew A. Peeples, Harsha Kasi,Cindy Huang. Tools for Integrating Data by Complex, Dynamic Categories.Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Technology 61(1):934-936.https://doi.org/10.1002/pra2.1145
2024 Hruschka, Daniel, Robert Bischoff, Cindy Hsin-yee Huang, and Matthew A. Peeples. Using ArchaMap to Help Datasets Talk to Each Other: A Case from Southwest Archaeology. Paper presented at the Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting, New Orleans, April 17-22.
2023 Hruschka Daniel J, Robert Bischoff, Matthew A. Peeples, Sharon Hsiao, Mohamed Sarwat. SocioMap: User-friendly tools for integrating data across complex, dynamic categories. Society for Cross-Cultural Research, Puerto Rico, February 2023
2023 Hruschka, Daniel, Robert J. Bischoff, and Matthew A. Peeples. ArchaMap: A Solution for Merging and Finding Archaeological Data. Paper presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Portland, OR, March 29-April 2.
2022 Hruschka, Daniel, Robert Bischoff, Matthew A. Peeples, Sharon Hsiao, Mohamed Sarwat. CatMapper: A user-friendly tool for integrating data across complex categories.https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/n6rty
2022 Hruschka Daniel J, Robert Bischoff, Matthew A. Peeples, Sharon Hsiao, Mohamed Sarwat. SocioMap: User-friendly tools for integrating data across complex, dynamic categories. DRH Annual Conference "History in Ones and Zeroes — The Challenges Involved in Coding the
Past", Vancouver, August 2022