Why bother with georeferenced mapping?

There is a long tradition of producing orienteering maps using low-tech approaches. They’ve worked well for a long time.

Approaches using magnetic compass, pace-counting, triangulation, stereophotogrammetry and so on have produced a wonderful collection of orienteering maps. There is a particular charm and delight in hand-drawn orienteering maps that pre-date computerised mapping.

New technology allows some new approaches to be added to the mix.

The central idea is georeferencing: every point on the orienteering map exactly corresponds to a known location on the Earth’s surface.

One consequence of georeferencing is that we can easily integrate data from a range of sources. LiDAR offers precise data about landforms, vegetation and structures. GPS traces make it easy to exactly translate map points and locations on the terrain. The wealth of data in the Open Street Map system can be added into orienteering maps. Orienteering fieldwork outputs from smartphone can be added back to the Open Street Map repository for the benefit of all. All these sources can be processed and quickly added to orienteering maps.

The computer mapping software takes care of the details about co-ordinate the different systems that the various sources use, analysing data and producing maps. Software products like Open Orienteering Mapper, LASTools, LASEdit, Karttapullautin and OL Laser are effective, and are available either as free open source software, or free-to-use software.

This Orienteering Mapping with LiDAR, Smartphones and Free Tools series of articles looks at how LiDAR, GPS, smartphones and Open Street Map can be applied to the creation of new orienteering maps.

Polite and constructive responses are always welcome.