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🧭 Building a lightweight sea-routing graph for historical GIS & DH use cases beyond simple port-to-port hops. Edges are weighted for ~5km coastal preference. Aiming for serverless exploration of connectivity in historical maritime trade. ⚓️ #MaritimeHistory #HistoricalGIS #DigitalHumanities

... using this graph of interconnected H3 (Hexagonal Hierarchical Geospatial Index) cells, I've computed and plotted a speculative historical sea route from Kilcolgan Castle to Faxfleet in under 2 seconds, all running in the browser. No server infrastructure or internet connection needed! ⛵

What’s the current coverage?

... Inspiration: doi.org/10.1057/s415... doi.org/10.1515/9783... Data sources: @copernicusecmwf.bsky.social, @copernicusmarine.bsky.social

... I need yet to tune the weighting of various parameters, but it’s striking how the same principles that shaped trans-Atlantic triangular trade routes in the age of sail apply on a more local scale too: prevailing winds, swell, waves, and currents all make return routes diverge from outbound ones.