Discuss on the Researching and Using Geo-Spatial Technology In the History Changing of the Silk Road

The Silk Road has an over 2,000 years history and as an main artery of the intercommunication between orient and occident, it is the living fossil of the interaction of human beings so it is the hot field of the history research during the world. In this article we first summarize the production in the Silk Road research area, including history research achievement, information research achievement and so on. Through the summarized analysis of home and abroad Silk Road research we give a conclusion that the Silk Road research is very important to the research of the ancient middle Asia's environment, country relationships and the develop or vanish of the road. After that we introduce the remote sensing, global position system and geographic information system technologies which have so many advantages to be used into the history research, through this analysis, we prefer that the information especially spatial information application is the most important for the Silk Road developing research and now this is the vacant area in China and even in the world. Finally we put forwards a new method which is using geo-spatial technology to research the history which was used to research on the traditional methods. We construct the space and time database for the Silk Road, use the database to management different scales, different time and dynasties and different format data, then we according the this database we construct the Chinese Silk Road geo-spatial information system. In this system people can get the Silk Road information especially space and different time information along the Silk Road, we also can use place name, coordinate information to find and located the sites. We even can use the powerful analysis functions which provide by the system to do some location service, mapping service and routing analysis, all above functions can give the history researchers a powerful tool to research during the space and time fields.