• Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TX
    Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TX
  • Harris County topographic watershed map of a preliminary drainage study for Harris County Flood Control, 1940
    Rafferty, J. H.. "Harris County topographic watershed map of a preliminary drainage study for Harris County Flood Control." (1940) Woodson Research Center, Rice University
  • Photograph of Buffalo Bayou looking east from Preston Street Bridge, Houston, TX in 1936
    "Photograph of Buffalo Bayou looking east from Preston Street Bridge." (1936) Buffalo Bayou Property Owners Association
  • Port of Houston Industrial District map showing proposed improvements to Green's Bayou for navigation, 1945
    Port of Houston Authority. "Port of Houston Industrial District map showing proposed improvements to Green's Bayou for navigation." (1945) Woodson Research Center, Rice University
  • Main Street viaduct, Houston, TX in 1910
    "Main Street viaduct." (1910) Museum of Houston and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center
  • Downtown Green Loop, Plan Downtown
    "Downtown Green Loop," Plan Downtown. (2017) Houston Downtown Management District and Central Houston Inc.
  • Cars by Buffalo Bayou, Houston, TX in 1936
    Schlueter, Frank J. "Cars by Buffalo Bayou." (1935) Museum of Houston and the Houston Metropolitan Research Center
  • Preliminary Tidal Zoning for Houston/Galveston Harbors, TX
    National Oceanic And Atmospheric Administration, "Preliminary Tidal Zoning for Houston/Galveston Harbors, TX," (2001)

The goal of Highways+Waterways is to create an online cartographic platform that charts the entire urban history of Houston as well as its susceptibility to flooding and other environmental events. Primary sources, such as photographs, historical maps, urban design/infrastructural plans, aerophotogrammetric surveys, spatially-defined datasets, and 50+ years of satellite observation will be located temporally and spatially in a web map, while their associated data –derived from a complex array of available datasets, e.g., infrared/optical hyperspectral imaging, radar scans, Lidar scans, aerial rasters, and vectors– will be integrated across a number of databases (including an open-access digital library of images, a geographic information system, an open source relational database, and a content delivery web service). Once brought together in a relational database with a PostGIS extension, disparate forms of data will not only produce unprecedented ways of depicting the history, design, development, and projections of Houston but will also set a precedent for constructing data chronologies from diverse sources. The relationship between the various project elements will produce a web environment where qualitative and quantitative data can be simultaneously loaded from an API, rendered across platforms, customized in many views, and queried by users in a system that supports multiple and interconnected expressions of diverse sources of information. Such an integrated approach will allow both humanists and scientists to reconstruct the history of Houston’s existence and provide a foundation from which to project the city’s future as it responds to climate change and rapid development.