Historical development of Kosice (Kassa) and its region - geoinformatical analysis

Abstract

This paper presents an example of historical and social analysis applying geoinformatical methods. The goal is to examine the urbanization process, the development of the city and the countryside and their interactions. Interesting results can be achieved if these procedures are investigated considering the historical periods. What kinds of changes have been caused by the moving of borders (city-, county- and other administrative borders) and by the different political trends? How did these changes take effect on the local people? The techniques of spatial analysis of GIS can provide the answers! The study area was Kosice (Kassa) and its region. Several ethnic groups live (or lived) together here: Slovak, Hungarian, Rusyn and German. Their reactions and movements to historical changes are very interesting to analyse. Ancient maps of counties of the Hungarian Kingdom and Kosice (Kassa), as well as historical military surveys were used to develop the GIS database. Due to the various data sources, the data quality is very different, but these maps contain the location of townships, their borders and the former land cover and land use. In order to examine the ethnical movements, census´ data of different times were used. Querying this developed GIS the effects of some examined historical periods on this terrain can be traced, e.g. the development of Kosice, and the various movements of ethnic groups.