Floods, Rivers and Historical Newspapers

This project offers an alternative means to explore historical data through newspapers by investigating, through subject data, aspects of flood prevention in the recent past. Following this summer’s exceptional heat wave and drought, do we need to prepare for an onslaught of storms and thus, need to consider how to reduce the impact of flooding?

Using the digitised collection available on eluxemburgensia.lu, the project produces a list of subjects treated within the collection, including the number of newspapers per subject. Users can use the summary list to identify newspapers covering a desired topic, thereby gaining insight into how deeply a subject may be covered. The resulting list of entries can then be used to drill-down for specific articles.

Overview

The process is as follows:

1. The programme lists the number of newspapers per subject in the collection.
2. The User can then select the subject of interest.
3. The list of newspapers which cover the desired subject are displayed.
4. The user can then select the newspapers of interest to research, in detail, on eluxemburgensia.lu.

This project employs digital tools, namely Python programming and Jupyter notebooks, to integrate and present data. However, technical expertise is not required to engage with the resource, which is designed to make cultural heritage accessible to a broad audience.

Let’s have a look in more detail using an example.

In practice

We start by launching the resource via the Binder link provided in the GitHub project linked below. To run the process, click on “Run...Run all Cells” in the menu. When requested (you may need to scroll down), select the number next to the subject that is of interest, in our case, we choose “Environnement” number 29. The system then displays the newspapers covering the selected subject.

By scrolling to the bottom, we see the final result: a list of newspapers with the link to their entry in eluxemburgensia.

To continue exploring the topic of flooding, we click on the first link (for example) and can then search within the newspaper for “inondation”, providing a list of 14 results.

In Dec 1994, there is a particularly interesting article entitled “Ein Jahr nach der Überschwemmungskatastrophe” or “One year after the catastrophic floods”.

Following the floods in January and December 1993, an inter-ministerial working group was formed to investigate causes and potential solutions. The commission proposed:

• “Improvements within the flood zone itself: early warning systems, modifications to buildings
• Expanding the drainage capacity of water in the flood zone
• Utilising or restoring natural retention basins in the upper reaches of a watercourse, as well as creating new artificial retention basins.” (Die Frage der Entschädigungen. In: De Kéisécker, nº 5 (01.12.1994), p. 13.)

The article continues by making a plea for the re-naturalisation of watercourses – meaning to restore a more natural course to the river. The old cadastral maps of 1820 to 1930 could be invaluable in this regard. Re-naturalisation’s goal is to allow the watercourse to develop its own (new) bed and permitting continuous movement over time.  As well, it increases the capacity of the watercourse which, in turn, protects the surrounding areas during small to medium floods.

Explore the project and begin your own journey with our GitHub notebook.