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Geographical, temporal and anecdotal data is hard to analyze with existing genealogy tools and processes. Most systems focus on a specific time and place of the ancestor. GenMatch creates a holistic view of events and activities unfolding over time. It gives us an analysis of spatio-temporal data, combining the where, the when and the who. It allows us to visualize data from a variety of sources such as oral histories, census, rolls, and cemetery listings in an interactive display. It provides new possibilities for rapid visual discovery of patterns and behaviours that connect the dots of family history where it could not be done before.
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The program incorporates evolutionary search algorithms to solve difficult documentation problems such as historical/genealogical tracking. GenMatch performs parallel computations layering information from archival documents, census, anecdotal and oral histories to plot intersecting data points. The result provides a three dimensional view of family history that can overcome the pitfalls of standard ancestry databases. Algorithms that do not use derivative information (such as pure genetic algorithms) are deficient when it comes to space/time matching.
