Better Cave Maps

[victorzamora]

This was brought up in another thread, and it's left me curious. In an age of computers being SO prevalent (including the smartphone and they're ubiquitous), many cave maps are unbelievably outdated. I'd love to see a good repository of digital cave maps. That way, new surveys could be updated and uploaded as often as nightly! There's no reason that FL cave maps should be as old, outdated, an uncirculated as they are. The only GOOD cave map I've found is this one for Ginnie, and it's unbelievably good. I don't know how updated or complete it is (I know it doesn't have "the back"), but it's a ton better than the HITW, Twin Cave, Peacock, JB, Indian, etc maps that are miserable.

Not only that, but the MX maps are GORGEOUS. I bought one and am framing it! I'd love to see something like this done for US caves.

Also, is there a way to add a "restricted" area to CDF where people can post unpublished or uncirculated cave maps? Even if it requires proof of certification for entry or something.

[LiteHedded]

This was brought up in another thread, and it's left me curious. In an age of computers being SO prevalent (including the smartphone and they're ubiquitous), many cave maps are unbelievably outdated. I'd love to see a good repository of digital cave maps. That way, new surveys could be updated and uploaded as often as nightly! There's no reason that FL cave maps should be as old, outdated, an uncirculated as they are. The only GOOD cave map I've found is this one for Ginnie, and it's unbelievably good. I don't know how updated or complete it is (I know it doesn't have "the back"), but it's a ton better than the HITW, Twin Cave, Peacock, JB, Indian, etc maps that are miserable.

Not only that, but the MX maps are GORGEOUS. I bought one and am framing it! I'd love to see something like this done for US caves.

Also, is there a way to add a "restricted" area to CDF where people can post unpublished or uncirculated cave maps? Even if it requires proof of certification for entry or something.

i think there is a version of that map with the back of ginnie on it. probably not ALL of it but a lot

[nkavallar]

It would be fairly easy to post maps in one location and its easy to take the old low res maps and digitally re-draw and enhance them to make them more useful. HOWEVER, you would run into a copyright poo-storm by using other peoples map / data without getting the permission from the people who made them (in some cases it would be near impossible to get to those individuals). The only way I can see it happen is if an organization that own the maps would make them available to free, or for the individuals who put in a lot of hard to make them publicly available.

[jlillest]

The best way to get better cave maps is to go out and make them!

Maps are hard to make and hard to keep updated with the current technology. Those of us that make cave maps generally don't make any money off of our work, so for most maps you get what you pay for. Some are super-high quality (ask Jason Richards to look at his Blue Springs mapbook), and most are good enough to represent the cave and show routes through a cave for guidance.

Someday in the not-distant future we'll have a Kinnect type device that can collect map data reliably, allow us to navigate while mapping, and upload to a computer that will give us lots of options on how we want the final product to look. No more paper maps for us, we'll whip out our Occulus Rifts and swim through the cave during our lunch break from work!

I'm sure some of the Mexico maps have been done to generate income, but I don't know that for a fact.

That said, I think the best way to get better maps is to contribute to a project whether it's your own or your on a large team. The more people that survey caves should help with more and better maps all over.

-Jon

[MikeT]

i think there is a version of that map with the back of ginnie on it. probably not ALL of it but a lot

Hancock map?

[Speleo99]

I'm just looking for "Like" button for Jon's post.

[LiteHedded]

Hancock map?

no there is a map with the new ginnie stuff on it

[Greenwood_60]

Kinect type devices for cave mapping would be awesome... but I think the next step is gyroscopic/accelerometer motion tracking. An android app, cellphone, and an otter box would be a heck of a start. Due to drift errors you'd have to average several trips through the same passage.

[jj1987]

This was brought up in another thread, and it's left me curious. In an age of computers being SO prevalent (including the smartphone and they're ubiquitous), many cave maps are unbelievably outdated. I'd love to see a good repository of digital cave maps. That way, new surveys could be updated and uploaded as often as nightly! There's no reason that FL cave maps should be as old, outdated, an uncirculated as they are. The only GOOD cave map I've found is this one for Ginnie, and it's unbelievably good. I don't know how updated or complete it is (I know it doesn't have "the back"), but it's a ton better than the HITW, Twin Cave, Peacock, JB, Indian, etc maps that are miserable.

Not only that, but the MX maps are GORGEOUS. I bought one and am framing it! I'd love to see something like this done for US caves.

Also, is there a way to add a "restricted" area to CDF where people can post unpublished or uncirculated cave maps? Even if it requires proof of certification for entry or something.

It's a lot easier to make a really nice map in Mexico where a set of doubles can get you a 3 hour dive, vs Indian where a set of doubles isn't enough to get started. Mexico also has an an exponentially greater amount of virgin cave floating around, so the temptation to steal someone else's passage and finish exploring it before they do isn't nearly as great. Actually in Mexico, there's at least some form of centralized cave survey data database.

On top of that, I don't know that most people making maps want to make those maps publicly available, and I can assure you they don't want to give real time updates nightly. If you look at mapped passage in FL vs unmapped passage you'll notice an extremely large difference in the condition of the passage, and because of this, quite a few people would disagree with you that there isn't a good reason to not circulate an up to date map.

[panagiotis]

Better quality of maps and/or reduce chance of disastrous misintepration?
What would be the downside of having a new indicator (e.g. one of those bright orange plastic golf balls with holes thru it so we can snap it closed over a line) placed on the start/end of a line is "sidemount only" like the maps indicate or line safety committee agree? This may require making a much longer line broken up and more reels for a sidemounter (which I am...) but can really reduce map misinterpretation. I am making an ASSumption, that most of the incidents talked in the original thread, that divers had no intention of going into that type of line...

Before someone says it, no, I am not advocating eventually putting in roadsigns too. ...just trying to balance that with other extreme of ripping out lines that cause issues / senior moments for some...