Socface, a collaborative research project submitted by the French Institute for Demographic Studies (INED), Paris School of Economics, the Interministerial Service of Archives of France (SIAF) and TEKLIA has been awarded funding by the French National Agency in the framework the 2021 Collaborative Research funding program.
At the beginning of the 19th century, France was a mostly rural country, like its European neighbors. Then the industrial revolution brought unprecedented economic and social transformations, the industrialization and urbanization of the country resulting in major changes in the micro-structures of society.
Based on nominal census lists digitized by archival services all over France, covering the period between 1836 and 1936, the Socface project aims to extract individual demographic and economic data on an unprecedented scale, that of the entire French territory.
Teklia's document understanding and handwriting recognition technology will be applied to the automatic processing of nominative census lists. Individual information linking will also be developed, to allow for the study of demographic and economic evolutions. The development of these new technologies will enable TEKLIA to consolidate its position as a leader in the field of large scale processing of historical documents.
Image: Archives Départementales du Rhone