The last few weeks have seen considerable progress on the project. Amongst the many tasks that we have been working on we have selected a project name (see blog post: finding an application name), we have finished processing all of the maps and have them imported into Geoserver, we have complete the digital capture of bomb location from both the weekly maps and aggregate map sheets and we are developing our brand identity and communication plan.
We have been working diligently on the development of the web and mobile app. Progress is going well and we are planning our second round of user testing at The National Archives this Friday Nov 9th between 12 and 4pm. Our first round of testing two Staurday’s ago was positive and we identified some issues that have been resolved (I will write a separate blog post discussing the user testing).
Currently the apps are without their stylish front-end as this is currently being designed and implemented. What we will be testing is the functionality and meaning of the buttons and text as well as evaluating how intuitive the tools are to use. We have also designed a set of icons for the different data we are clustering together and we will evaluate if their inherent meaning can be understood.
For a sneak preview of the apps we have created a short video – I used the freely available Microsoft Movie Maker together with lot of screen shots, that I linked together using transitions. For the music I browsed the open source catalogue available via Jamendo. This is my first attempt at creating a video, so it is not too long but hopefully gives you a taste of what we are developing.
I have embedded the video in this blog post, but the project has also set up a You Tube channel where we will be posting more updates and project information. The channel is called BombSightUK.
Mapping the Blitz Bomb Census: Bomb Sight 
I lived in Chiswick after the ww11 and a lot of bomb locations are missing ie. north of hogarth rounderabout took a big hit there is a large blocks of flats now on the site how was this list put to -gether Richard
Please look at the project about section – at this present time we are only using an 8 month period of the war and have collated data from the Bomb Census Survey Maps located in the National Archives.
There are a couple of posts about the data in the blog. We hope to find more funding to extend to the whole period of the War and other British Cities.
so much is missing. The blitz started on Sept 7th 1940 at 4pm,you don’t even start until October by which time 7 members of my family had been killed.
We are aware that a lot of data are still missing. We had to begin somewhere and there were a complete set of maps in the archive for 8 month time frame based on how they were collected during the war. The process of collecting and processing the data is incredibly time consuming and we have done our best with the resources available to us. We have documented how we selected the data so you may be interested to have a look at previous blog posts. We would like to find more funding to ensure the entire period is mapped.
Many thanks for your comment.
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Portsmouth would be a good city to map next, it was the most bombed city outside of London
Thanks for your interest in the project. We would be interested in expanding the project to the other British and European cities (eg Koln, Dresden) that were bombed but will need more funding, so we are on the lookout. Watch this space. We have started this project in London because of the sheer volume of data.
Hope you get your funding – well done so far. We had a flat roof on top of our three storey house and a collection of incendrie bombs that dropped there, worst was the VII which landed in the road below ours (we being close to the Archway (Highgate) that is to say up the hill) – strange how the blast went right up the hill.
Oh your comment explains why the bomb site which I remember playing in as a child is not noted. It was behind the flats (Parkhurst Court) in Warlters Road N7 and provided a great playground for all the local children. Perhaps you should set up a site where people can record the bombsites they remember as children (before we all die out).
That is a really great idea. We are looking for more funding and would really like to add a facility where people can add their own memories but I like the suggestion that you could also add in a tag to say what happened to the site.
Thanks for your interest.
There must be many people like me who remember exactly where some of the bombs fell and who can correct and/or add to the data in the map. I am surprised how inaccurate much of the information is.
Please have a look at the data sources page and read about the precisional accuracy: http://bombsight.org/data/sources/
The data was extracted from an original paper map from the 1940s
Thanks for your reply and good luck with your funding. And thanks for your work.