Palestine Open Maps

The Challenge

The project needed a way to digitize, georeference, and serve thousands of historical paper maps from the Mandate era, making them accessible and searchable alongside modern data. Ensuring data sovereignty and performance for a globally distributed audience was critical.

Our Solution

We developed a custom map viewer using MapLibre GL JS that allows users to overlay historical maps with adjustable opacity. We built a robust backend for managing georeferenced assets and implemented a vector tile pipeline to serve complex historical boundaries efficiently.

Key Results

• Digitized over 200 sheets of historical maps
• Sub-second map load times globally
• Interactive search of historical locations