Vologda city plans of the 18th -19th centuries as a basis for geographic information system of the city topography

The staff of the Vologda State Museum-Preserve is creating a local closed branch geographic information system (GIS) “Vologda City in the 18th - the Beginning of the 21st Century: the History of Planning and Development, Cultural Heritage Objects”, which will be available online. The GIS is based on 17 historical plans of Vologda of the 18th - 19th centuries, which were for the first time revealed in archives and museums of Vologda, Moscow and Saint Petersburg. The plans are being analyzed as a source of historical information, their peculiarities and preservation have been studied. Investigated plans are divided into two groups. One group includes plans, made on the basis of the first regular plan of Vologda, confirmed by Empress Katherine the Great in 1781. The other group consists of plans, formed after the renewed town plan, confirmed by Emperor Alexander II in 1871. Close to both groups are the plan projects. These plans are referred to the first hundred years of the history of Vologda regular plan development. All studied plans are made by means of instrumental survey, which makes possible to connect them to the system of global coordinates. Plans comparison will give GIS users a possibility to trace in details time changes in Vologda planning and development, and the modification of the river net on the town territory. Plan explications contain unique information about titles and position of religious, public and private buildings and structures. Together with facts from other historical sources, these plans will help to raise and solve a complex of questions about Vologda history of the 18th - 19th centuries. It is important, that plans of the end of the 18th century contain valuable facts about ancient irregular development of Vologda and its suburbs. It is known, that medieval Vologda development was very conservative, that is why the received materials with certain modifications can be transferred on earlier period - at least on the 16th -17th centuries.