Output details

EVAN (European Virtual Anthropology Network) toolbox

Research Questions

The aim of the research was to build enabling tools for our own research that would also enable the work of many other groups with similar interests.

The research methodology

O’Higgins was scientist in charge (SIC) at York and coordinated the UK centres; Computer Science at Hull (Professor Roger Phillips) and a University of York spinout company, Cybula, with an interest in using landmark tools for human identification.

These partners together with Professors Bookstein and Weber in Vienna oversaw and managed toolkit development. This was carried out by 6 programmers based at York and Hull. Phillips led on programming while O’Higgins and Bookstein led on design and implementation. The development built on two previous, widely-used geometric morphometric tools morphologika (O’Higgins and Jones, https://sites.google.com/site/hymsfme/downloadmorphologica) and Edgewarp (Bookstein and Green, http://brainmap.stat.washington.edu/edgewarp/). These provided both relevant experience that guided the EVAN toolbox development and substantial tried and tested code (hundreds of thousands of lines).

Availability and distribution of compiled and source code

At the end of the project the source code was made available for free download (http://www.evan-society.org/node/42) under a GNU General Public License Agreement. The SICs of the EVAN MCRTN formed the EVAN Society (http://www.evan-society.org/) to continue its development cooperatively and distribute compiled updates as well as to continue to develop and maintain a substantial shared database of CT and surface scans of hominins and other primates essential to the virtual anthropology community. These are curated on the NESPOS Society database; an open source information platform that focuses on data relevant to Pleistocene humans (www.nespos.org). These are accessible to members of the EVAN Society, membership being available for €100 annually. The Society is non-profit and proceeds are used to maintain, debug and develop new tools within the software and to contribute to the running of the NESPOS database