ABSTRACT
Since 1 994, a major project at Queen Mary and Westfield College has been constructing a historical Geographic lnfonnation System (GIS) covering the changing boundaries of major statistical reporting units of Great Britain from the early nineteenth century to the present. This is linked to a major database of census, demographic , economic, health , and electoral statistics, allowing mapping and analysis of the country ' s changing human geography from the beginnings of modem statistical data collection in the early nine teenth century to the present. This GIS is becoming a major resource in its own right, and it is hoped that will be used to produce an electronic including animations and virtual-reality simulations, to mark the bicentenary of the first census in 200 1 (Southall and White, 1 997a). This paper discusses what the GIS contains, the technical challenges of building a GIS that includes a major time-variant element, and the analytical possibili ties such a system creates .
