Map Organization

"Latest", "FRAME" and "Clone" files

Follow Navigation Games' method for organizing files within the Maps drive. Follow all naming conventions for the folders, as described on this page.

The file to use for drawing courses is the layout file (called FRAME); this uses the "Latest" ocad file as a background map. (The FRAME file is called "layout" by David L) This means that the FRAME ocad file will always be pointing to the latest version.

"Clone" files are temporary, for editing until ready to publish as "Latest".

To update the map

To make edits on the OCAD file, first make sure that the current "Latest" version has been archived into the Archive folder.

If the updates will be quick, then you can work in the Latest file. 

Alternatively, if the updates will take a long time and you run the risk of needing to use the file before the edits are completed satisfactorily, create a clone of the Latest version (with "Clone" in the name). When the updates are done, rename it to Latest. (Jon C uses this clone approach). 

If needed, update the credits in the FRAME file to include those who field checked and made the updates.

When you've completed updates, save a copy to the Archive folder with your initials and date. Feel free to summarize the changes you made in a google doc in the Map folder.

Various Info

Standards

• Going forward, we should strive to use IOF's school map standard, which is based on ISSprOM 2019. Any appropriate scale is fine. 

• We should add standard look and feel for our maps, such as a red bar on the north side of the map, Navigation Games branding, and so on. See OUSA YMP for an example.

OUSA school map program

Where possible, maps can be made through the "Youth Mapping Program" at OUSA. This requires sufficient advance notice.

The YMP also has good information about making maps and how to work with field checkers.

• See also OUSA School Map Program:

• Examples of communication with Eyes on the Ground: April 2021; Communication guide for remote field checking.

References

• Getting started with orienteering mapping: an introduction (BOF): short and sweet. This and the next are by David Olivant (Nottinghamshire Orienteering Club)

• Generalization and Clarity (BOF): an excellent short description.

• Best practices for sprint mapping - from IOF. Key points: generalization and legibility; map production; common mistakes.

  • Harmonization: maintaining a consistent approach to generalization across the map. Esp if multiple mappers are involved.

  • Map all unique objects, passages and barriers.

Mapping Software

• Open Orienteering Mapper (free, open-source): Download and install from https://www.openorienteering.org/apps/mapper/ 

• OCAD (paid): https://www.ocad.com/en/ocad-orienteering/   Barb has saved the OCAD license information in BitWarden. 

• Kartapullautin (free): automatic generation of orienteering-like maps

Size and Scale

Use this table for determining what scale to use, to fit the map on a US letter size paper.

Field Checking

Relevant information

• "Orienteering mapping with LiDAR, smartphones and free tools" by Greg Wilson, 2017. This has a lot of good info for getting LiDAR, and using LASTools to clip and merge it. It also describes Open Orienteering Mapper.

Apps for field checking

• Use the OCAD Sketch app on your phone to load up a map from OCAD. Quicker and easier than using Avenza, and then you can sketch notes on it as you walk around and import the sketches back into OCAD. Here is the video from OCAD/Andreas Kyburz on how to use OCAD Sketch 

• Avenza

• Location Tagger (iOS) app

• Adding features based on the GPS data in their photos

• Runkeeper app

• GPS Essentials app

• GPS watches with Fitbit, Garmin, Strava, Amazfit Bip, etc.

• GPSBabel can help with file conversion when needed

• Android: GPS Logger by BasicAirData; can recor positiona nd path. Very accurate. No integrated maps. (Enable EGM96 automatic altitude correction in settings). 100% free and open source.

• Momap

• OriBooklet (Android)

Printing Maps

Print at 116 Henry St office

• Printing maps at large scale (tiled - you then cut and tape together): 

  • On a Mac: Open the map (PNG or JPG version) in Paint. Go to File > Print > Page setup and choose multiple pages. 

  • On a PC: Open in Adobe Acrobat Reader DC. Print. Under Page Sizing & Handling, select Poster. Change the Scale (eg 300%), and overlap (eg 1/4") as needed.

• Use heavier weight bright white paper for maps.

• Sometimes in Adobe Acrobat, if I print with "save toner" sometimes it doesn't print the linear features correctly - it makes them too thin. Fix by printing once after unchecking "save toner". Then if I go back to "save toner" it seems to work.

Printing posters

• Flash Print in Cambridge will print on vinyl for $10/square foot (typically $60 for our size maps), or $15/square foot to print and laminate.

• We have used vistaprint in the past; they charge $57.77 to print one poster 24" x 36". Plus shipping. We have our projects stored there under president@navigationgames.org account.

• Cost of purchasing a large-format printer might be worth it...

Karttapullautin

Karttapullautin is a program that creates orienteering-like maps automatically from LIDAR data. Note that OCAD now has the ability to bring in LIDAR data to create maps so we may not need to run karttapullautin on its own.

Steps to make a map with karttapullautin

1. Get LIDAR data

2. Run the program

General map requirements quiz

1. Orienteering maps are intended to provide information for cross-country navigation. Which of the following features impede progress, and which make the going easier?

   • water

   • trails

   • cliffs

   • dense vegetation

   • open forest

   • roads

2. Why does participation in the sport of orienteering help mappers make better orienteering maps?

3. Match the colors to type of feature:

   • Colors: blue, yellow, green, browh, purple, black and/or grey

   • Features: vegetation, landforms, open areas, course information, water, rock/cliffs, paths/roads, man-made objects

4. What is the most important aspect of an orienteering map?

5. What are the requirements on magnetic north lines?

6. There are 5 categories of runnability: easy running, normal running speed, slow running, walk/difficult to run, and fight. 

   • What is the approximate speed in min/km for an elite runner in each of these categories?

   • Provide examples of features for each category.

7. Give six examples of uncrossable or impassable features.

8. Define selective generalization.

9. List three means of graphical generalization.

10. Generally speaking, are point features more or less important than line features? Why?

11. What is the fundamental tension in drawing a map - in other words, what are the two important qualities that are sometimes at odds with each other?

12. In current ISOM standards, is it required that the map be georeferenced?

Note from Jeff Teutsch's class 6/8/2024

Intro to Orienteering Mapping 

Students

• Me

• Karen Yeowell

• Ed Bacher

• Jules Fourment

• Min-Jae Kuo

• Suhaana K

• Lucas Goulart

• Ellie Lin

• Dean Redfearn

• Yulian Keutsch

• Ron

• William Burnett

1. Open Orienteering Mapper (OOM), which is a free mapping software. You can download it at https://www.openorienteering.org/apps/mapper/.

2. SAS Planet, which is another free software we will use to download aerial images. You can download it at http://www.sasgis.org/download/. If you are having trouble downloading it from that link you can also get it from this zip file which I've put up on Google drive that you can download directly and unzip then run the SASPlanet.exe file.

Course manual

He's recording the class.

About Jeff: Aerospace engineering degree. Started teaching mapping in winter of 2020. Started Navigation Sports in Dec 2018.

There is no formal education in getting people going in orienteering mapping. IOF has map specification documents. 

There are 4 modules:

1. setting up your first project

   1. Intro to basic mapping concepts

   2. Intro to OOM

   3. Georeferencing and declination

   4. Open data

   5. SAS Planet

   6. OOM

   7. Summary review and feedback

2. drawing in OOM (there is also an OCAD class)

3. intro to fieldwork

4. laying out your map

Map making process

bold is for things we're doing in this course.

1. Choose the area

2. Get permissions

3. Acquire base material (data)

4. Prepare base material

5. Drawing contours and other info from base material

6. Fieldwork

7. Drafting fieldwork

8. Course setting

9. Map layout

10. Printing - you have to think about this!

He opens up an example map in OOM and shows us around.

Our goal today is to get all the templates (background maps and images) in place, properly aligned to each other and the latitude and longitude of the area to be mapped. With magnetic north at the top of the map.

Value of properly georeferenced map: cartography tools and orienteering and course review tools.

Georeferencing

Geodesy is the Earth science of accurately measuring and understanding Earth's geometric shape, orientation in space and gravitational field. It's not a perfect sphere. Two systems in use: NAD 83 (North American Datum 1983 released in 1986), and WGS 84 (World Geodetic System 1984, last updated in 2004). These are a mathematical model of the shape of the earth.

Map projections. Mercator projection is common. Preserves angles, but areas are distorted. Coordinate reference systems use a map projection - often Transverse Mercator. https://xkcd.com/977/ 

Coordinate Reference Systems (CRS) - a system of local coordinates. Used in GPS. Each has an EPSG code (a unique ID). We tell OOM which CRS we are using. Recommends using UTM.

• UTM - WGS 84

• MTM and MTM zones used in Canada

• UTM Zones - 60 zones of 6 degrees often split into N and S zones. He recommends using UTM zone in your map. Your data might be in SPCS. Each zone is 668 km at the equator. 

  • Coordiantes are in Eastings and Northings. They have a false offset. UTM Zone Central Meridiain is set to 500,000m East. For North Zones, equator is set to 0m North. For South Zones, equator is set to 10,000,000 m. This keeps the numbers positive.

• Based on Mercator Projection

• SPCS (State Plane Coordinate System) - NAD 83. This is in the USA.

  • ~125 different CRS; each state has its own (one or more). Some state plane systems are based on the Mercator Projection and some on Lambert Conical. See Spatialreference.org. You can look up the coordinate system within the data. Spatialreference.org - try searching for Massachusetts. There are various EPSG codes. NAD83(2011) is the most likely CRS that we'd use.

• Web Mercator

  • standard for onilne maps; developed in 2005 by Google. EPSG 3857. SASPlanet uses older EPSG 3875 for images. Assumes earth is a sphere; can do faster calculations. 

Coordinates

• Geographic coordinates (lat, long) - measured in degrees

• CRS coordinates - measured in meters

• Paper or map coordinates - measured in cm/in

How we use this info:

1. pick a CRS (UTM - WGS 84)

2. Determine your zone

3. Pick a reference point for your map in geographic coordinates (lat, long)

4. Set up map georeferencing with this info

5. Use reference point to determine declination

6. Determine CRS of base material for import

Compass needle points in the direction of magnetic field (not magnetic north). Declination is the angle between that and true north. Say "Magnetic field direction" instead of "magnetic north"

http://geomag.org/info/declination.html

Periodically (every 10 years, say), rotate your maps. How do you do that?

Grid convergence

• grivation = magnetic declination - grid convergence. Rotate maps by this. (Grid north is different than true north.)

• Declination = true north - magnetic field direction

• Georeferenced maps are based on grid north

Positive convention

• Positive declination means magnetic field direction is east of true north. 

You can calucate declination from lat & long using www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml 

How to calculate map rotation: 

You put in your coordinate reference system, what zone you're in. Then put in your coordinates; put in delination; it calculates the grivation....

Given a location:

• Get geographic coordinates from google maps

• Get UTM zone from https://mangomap.com/robertyoung/maps/69585/what-utm-zone-am-i-in-# 

• Get EPSG code by googling with coordinates

• Get magnetic declination from tool https://www.ngdc.noaa.gov/geomag/calculators/magcalc.shtml - remember W is negative.

• Get grivation from Map Georeferencing tool in OOM

Open Data

Open = freely available. Typically from a government source. Various formats.

Examples of open data sites: Halifax, Montreal, Ottawa, Cambridge 

Every source provides different data. 

There are companies that provide the portals. ESRI is one. Typically there are a couple different systems. 

When you download data, shapefiles are a good choice. 

In your file browser, visualize the file extensions. The key file is the .shp file, and the .dbf is a database file; .shx is some xml type file. When load into OOM, The .prj file shows the georeferencing information: coordinate projection information. Format is (I missed what he said - "well known text"???).

Google search Ottawa data portal...

What all types of features can you get from local governments? Answer: Buildings, trees, sidewalks, road edges (not center line), fences, water, contours, orthophotos/aerial photos

This is mostly relevant for urban sprint maps. In a rural/remote area you'll be relying on LIDAR for figuring out many of these features.

Ottawa has this nice feature of getting all data by neighborhood.

Key terms: 

• polygons/areas/footprints (not points or locations, except point feature like trees)

• NOT centerlines (roads)

• Surfaces (eg sidewalk surfaces [good] vs sidewalks [nope - that's the center line])

Look for metadata (note projections, last update/acquisition, coverage/completion)

OSM data is not as complete and high quality as the data sourced from the municipality.

Jeff would trust the LIDAR data over other sources, but LIDAR doesn't let you import the objects.

See the course manual for other data file formats.

LIcensing

• "You are free to" statement

• Acknowledgement and attribution

• Exemptions

• Non-endorsement

• Warranty (None)

• Governing law

Remember:

• want shape files .shp

• Projections in .prj

• Age & quality

• Compare various available sources and work with what's best

SAS Planet

Getting georeferenced aerial images. The information here was removed & added to the Aerial Imagery page.

Putting it all together

1. Open OOM

2. Create a new map. Scale 1:4000. ISSprOM 2019_4000. "Create", "OK"

3. Template window - open it.

4. Map > Georeferencing. 

   1. Coord reference system UTM

   2. Geographic coordinates. Get from google maps. 

   3. UTM Zone - calculate this with the button after you put in the geographic coordinates.

   4. Declination: get this as shown preivously - Lookup button sometimes doesn't work. Google: "magnetic declination calculator" to get the NOAA one. If magnetic north is east of true north, then it will be positive.

   5. Do it.

5. Import > ...

   1. Assign new symbols: buildings - repace area with building. (Hit "no" when it asks something...)

   2. georeferencing - tell it the coordinate system

When bringing in a photo need to know the CRS and whatnot. 

There are a few categories of data.

1. Import into the master map (the final O map). Once you get all of these, save as 2 different files. Save as a master file. Everything else will be loaded as template. Save a 2nd copy of it to load trees into.

2. Might be helpful - some but not all. Tree points for example. Will delete a lot of them that are in olive green areas, for example. Want to simplify. Or areas might be white forest or yellow with white dots.

Because of data size, might want to crop into parts of the city to keep this file manageable.

My questions:

ArcGIS for Traffic Data

In order to view historical traffic data from here, It says it requires an ArcGIS Online organizational subscription. It's supposed to have historical data. I'm signing up for an account (free 21-day) for ArcGIS as ngprez using president@navigationgames.org. 

Apparently I have an account as barb.bryant@gmail.com, so trying that first. I get "An error occurred loading this layer". I could try logging in as ngprez - that failed. Need to investigate more how to get an organizational account.

Meanwhile, I see that the data comes from tomtom. 

Tomtom is expneisve; I'm signing up for a free Traffic Analytics product trial at move.tomtom.com. I chose all the products (4) to trial. Then I log into https://move.tomtom.com/dashboard. I'm going to traffic stats; have 20 free reports. https://ts.tomtom.com/reports . I was able to make a report but limited dates: I did Sunday mornings in August 2024, 8am-noon. Results:

• Only some streets are available

Median speed:

• Hanover St (highlighted above): N=291; avg speed (km/h) 17.5; harmonic average (HA) 9.7; 50th 16; 15th 8; 85th 26. 

• N=257; avg 21.7; HA 15.8; 15th 12; 50th 22; 85th 31

• N-218; 20.5; 15.6; 12; 21; 28

• n=224; 21.3; 15.3; 12; 22; 31

• N=226; 23.8; 17.1; 14; 23; 33

• N=231; 23.8; 16.6; 14; 23; 32

Prince St

• N=489; 21.9; 18.1; 16; 23; 28

• N=480; 24.8; 17.8; 16; 25; 33

N Washington St

• N=4745; 36.2; 30.4; 28; 37; 44

• N=4699; 33.3; 23.8; 17; 35; 47

So typically the average on a Sunday morning in August for a 4-hour stretch, looking at Prince Street, We see about 120 cars/hour or 1 car every 30s. Whereas N Washington St has around 1150 cars/hour, or 20/minute, or 1 car every 3 s.