10-01, 15:30–16:00 (Europe/London), Create 2
Somehow I accidentally became an expert in British World War Two coordinate systems. I'll describe how this happened, and how it led to some new collaborations, historical research, and a QGIS plugin.
During World War Two, British forces used a coordinate grid system based on a Cassini map projection and a system of grid letters and numbers. This system is of interest today from researchers wanting to understand locations in historical military documents and people trying to locate reported bomb sites to assess possible risks from unexploded ordnances.
Someone asked about this grid system on the GIS Stack Exchange site. So I got into a rabbit hole of historical proportions, implementing the transformation in a spreadsheet, Javascript, Python, and finally a QGIS plugin. Along the way two other people expressed an interest, which led to some research connections being made and some iterative development of the plugin's features.
I'm a research fellow at Lancaster University, in the Medical School, doing research mostly into statistical applications in NHS data and disease modelling. But I do a lot of maps in my spare time.