Discussion: City Park Maps - Easy to Make?

I keep hearing about how we need more permanent courses close to where the people are. Is there a way to create a City Park Map with a permanent course on it easily using available technology? The goal would be to allow a person make a city park map in 6 – 8 hours total time. This would include the mapping, the walking around the park to find the control stations for a Trivia-O type course and getting it onto the club website. If we could get maps in the cities where people are, have them do some orienteering in their parks, then we might get some of them to come out into the woods. Who knows?
Is it possible to make a park map and Trivia-O course in 6 – 8 hours? Can someone devise a series of steps to allow anyone to do this?

From the Orienteer Kansas Facebook page from just 4 days ago....

Wouldn't it be cool to have a bunch of simple orienteering maps of small parks and school yards? I think it would be great. I also think it wouldn't be too difficult.

With that in mind, I put together a few "screen casts" of a way to prepare a simple orienteering map. It relies on free base map material from Open Street Map and the USGS National Map web pages and free open source software for map drawing from Open Orienteering Mapper.

You can download the mapping software at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/oorienteering/

I've put together four short videos that show how to go about creating a simple map. The videos cover:

1 Downloading a map with some basic features like roads and buildings as well as an air photo.

http://youtu.be/aHX3kazeJVI

2 Opening the downloaded data in the Open Orienteering Mapper software.

http://youtu.be/2iTWRm0D62o

3 Drawing a few features and learning a little bit about Open Orienteering Mapper.

http://youtu.be/TGtCWm1plcU

4 Printing out a map to take to the field and check.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgOYPJdPDkI

Michael

I'll also add that when I create 'Hood Hunts, everything can be done in just a few hours. I'm usually closer to the 6 hour range because I'm a bit of a perfectionist. I don't make the maps in OCAD or OOM, though (I use PowerPoint for various reasons).

I'd also strongly encourage to develop a mobile app for this. Like it or not, young people these days don't use paper maps. Put the maps in the app, and it will be more enticing for people to do it in 2013. People who need a crutch can use the blue dot. Those who don't want to use it can turn it off. You can also use geofencing for scoring, so you don't need trivia questions. Plug it into social media so that people can share it.

Some existing orienteering web app-like things:
http://www.vorienteering.com/
http://mobo.osport.ee/?l=en

There is another tool that can be very useful if you have access to two computers on line. Bring up the map as far as you can draw it using Open Orienteering Mapper or OCAD. (I like to use Google earth for background as my maps tend to be a bit larger and their registry system is very good.)
Then this is the piece de resistance and real time saver when it comes to field work. Check out the same area in Bing Maps. In a lot of America they have very high resolution photos - so much so that in the sample park above -Holcom Park in Lawrence KS) you can see the beach volleyball area is not perfectly square and the baseball diamond has four light standards along the outfield fence - good for control locations, a lady is pushing a carriage while her child walks beside and two people are playing tennis on one of the two courts. At a certain point of close up the Bing map switches to bird's eye - great for doing pseudo field work and for seeing what is actually under those building canopies.
So put the monitor with the Bing map next to your computer with the mapping program and start correcting.

Nice apps! Thanks, Pink Socks.
I had to do an assignment for a programming class just now that needed to use Geolocation API (the thing that tells you where you are on your phone or even on a desktop computer).
I put together a quick app that lets you run an unflagged course, punching your phone when you get to a control (location stored as GPS). It would be great to reduce the volunteer time involved in walking in the woods/parks. Plus, you know, "kids these days with their technology!" :)

Gord, you can take a screenshot of the area you're interested in, save it to an appropriate file format, and open it in OCAD as a background layer to your map.

No you missed a bit of the point. Yes, I save and use air photos as background all the time, orthophotos if the counties have them. But after I have gone as far as I can with those photos and the map is ready for fieldwork I've found one more step that can be done at my desk and is proving to save a lot of the time in the terrain. It doesn't work everywhere as the high resolution photos Bing posts seem to be limited to populated areas. But when it works it can virtually save the need for field work in urban parks such as Peter was asking about. For instance in traditional air photos it is often difficult to pick out linear features such as fences and low walls: not so in a bird's eye view. Buildings with overhanging roofs are common here in Florida. With the bird's eye view to back you up you can get a better handle on the actual dimensions of the building. To a certain extent they even help you get in under the trees.
But as a background in OCAD? No I don't think a bird's eye view would work very well without a lot of adjusting.

To clarify, the "birds-eye view" is an oblique view, not straight down.

Would anyone like to participate in an on-line mapping challenge?
Here is how it will work:
Write to tell me you wish to participate in the contest. gordhun at rogers com
I will assign you a school and/or nearby park that could use an orienteering map.
Using tools you can only find on line - open street map, open orienteering mapper, Google earth, Bing, OCAD 6, (or a later version of OCAD if you already have it), etc create an orienteering map for the assigned area.
When your map is finished send it in as a jpeg and it will be sent to the locals for assessment.
Send also an assessment of how many working hours it took you to complete the map.
All the maps received will be placed on line and there will be a period of online voting to determine the best looking map. Judges will have a chance to compare the map to Bing bird's eye/ oblique images of the same area.
For lack of a better name the winner will be awarded the Tom Sawyer Prize for on-line park mapping.
Maps created in less than 8 working hours will receive the Goodwin Award.

This sounds like an interesting project. I would also like to see a "mapping city parks for dummies" created so that non-tech savvy can do it. We might call it "Map from a Box". It would be nice if we didn't have to have everyone invent the wheel.
If people take up Gord's challenge, there may be a few models that can be streamlined for the average person to use. It would be great. We need maps near people. The "computer map" is a great thought because every young person has a smart phone......

Peter,
No one, but no one has come forward to participate in an on-line mapping challenge.
That's too bad because I have a number of schools in Florida that could use orienteering style maps to improve their programs but do not have the resources to produce them.
I tried out a new wrinkle today and it worked very well. After creating the map drafting off air photos and then elaborating on the work using the oblique view available from Bing Maps -Bird's eye I 'moved around' the school and park using 'street view'. WOW! The blinds spots inevitable with air photos and building shadows were gone. It was as if I was walking around with compass, board and mylar in hand. Trees I had interpreted as shrubbery became trees, signs appeared under tree canopies and all kinds of detail jumped out from behind buildings. Street view isn't available everywhere but if you can find it for your urban project, use it.

It would be great if this can be put into a form that people can map a park quickly. If anyone can devise a plan that can be published, that would be great.

The problem is that every one is different. Sometimes lidar is available; sometimes the county has 2-foot contours; sometimes the photos are leaf-off. Other times data is hard to find.

No one, but no one has come forward to participate in an on-line mapping challenge.

I would love to, but I have five real maps already waiting to be done... :)

These are 'real maps' with real school programs waiting for the real resources to produce the maps.
Five? What is holding you back? I have about 20 done or near completion in the last two years.

5 'real' maps being 5 local maps needed for local competitions invovling Juffy's local orienteering community. I reckon Juffy might go close on the 20 in 2 years too, including just about every ISSOM sprint map in WA.

I would love to, but I have five real maps already waiting to be done... :)

I'm only working on three at the moment :-( (all voluntary)

I probably won't reach gordhun's level for a while yet because my 'real' job that pays real money to pay for my real mortgage is holding me back.

You got a real job tRicky? From the number of AP postings I thought you were a pensioner like gord.

Well other people here post on FaceBook during work hours so I figured I should get paid to post on AP!

Five? What is holding you back?

A job, you old fart. ♥ :)

I reckon Juffy might go close on the 20 in 2 years too, including just about every ISSOM sprint map in WA.

I got a credit on Guildford and Curtin. Without me those maps are nothing.

Five? What is holding you back?

To be sure that was tongue in cheek. My retirement from the work force, realization that I have fewer years left to make a contribution and finding myself among a whole bunch of need (So many parks; so few maps) is driving my desire to create maps for orienteering 'close to the people'.

PS How do you create those italics? I can't even do it when I copy and paste.

<blockquote>Fun stuff goes here</blockquote>

<i>for italics</i>

Got it. Thanks Janet.

We should probably stop here before Ken makes a list of "HTML tags that should be filtered out of comments" and ruins all our fun. :)

'including just about every ISSOM map in WA' - except those produced for the last two national Championships held in WA.

Would 'the overwhelming majority' have offended you less? I didn't say ALL.

And I very much enjoyed my run at Mandjar. Thank you for that one.

I assume the other one was York. Nice area, pity I was unfit and racing nearly ended with me in an ambulance. Is there a reason we've never been back to that one?

https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/swLAcltNjHhO...

A little experiment with LiDAR + OSM + Karttapullautin. Making that took about one hour.

Google found this:
https://colsa.unh.edu/woodlands/sites/colsa.unh.ed...

One hour?
Really?
I can see the LiDAR import being quick but the other two? It would take me an hour to learn how to pronounce Karttapulatin.
What is the secret?

There is an actual [old] o-map of the UNH college woods area. I can't find mine but maybe someone else can share for Jagge's benefit.

Well, no secrets, I just knew what to do - mostly simple and straight forward things when one gets hang of it.

- Lidar download fron opentopo (30 min).
- While it was downloading I downloaded OSM data of the same area from http://www.osm974.re/osm2gis/ and converted ti to the same projection as Lidar using ogr2ogr tool of gdal. Commands were

set GDAL_DATA=C:\Program Files\GDAL\gdal-data
"c:\Program Files\GDAL\ogr2ogr" -skipfailures -f "ESRI Shapefile" line.shp osm_line.shp -t_srs EPSG:26919
"c:\Program Files\GDAL\ogr2ogr" -skipfailures -f "ESRI Shapefile" polygon.shp osm_polygon.shp -t_srs EPSG:26919
(gdal/ogr2ogr is awesome)
and zipped resulting shape files.

- when lidar download was done I thinned (orginal data was 11 pt/m2) and retiled it to smaller tiles to be able to process them fast with several threads:
> lastile *.laz -olaz -keep_random_fraction 0.2
(lastools is awesome)

then I let karttapullautin to process it. I set it in batch mode, 4 treads (I have 4 cores) and vector dataset type to OSM in the ini file of Karttapullautin. I placed laz tiles and the zip of re-projected shape files to input folder. I also checked guestimate of magnetig declination from http://magnetic-declination.com/ - itis not correct by close enough for this experiment. Then I started the process. I took about 50 minutes. (Pullautin isn't that awesome, but it makes some things somehow)

When process was over I merged tiles with command:
> pullauta pngmerge 1
Then I opened resulting png image with a image editor and rotated, cropped and added frames and texts, saved as png and posted to picasa. (10 min).

Ocad/OOmapper was not used here at all. One could use them for finishing it all.

I think the first edition was in 1985, and it's been updated many times. This is the latest one I could find in my files, sorry it has my route scribbled all over it. (And I don't know what's up with #9 and #10 -- I must have gone to them, because I have splits for them.)

From map scans

Has the river gone dry in the last 27 years or is there just a lot of scum on it.
Thanks for the information Jagge.
I will certainly try to extrapolate what you are doing to my situation in Florida where more and more schools are seeking o sstyle maps of their home area.

There's still open water in the reservoir, I think it's just that the automatic tools have difficulty identifying it as such.

View Larger Map

Hey Jagge: sweet about the "vector type to OSM in the ini"!!! I didn't know. That DOES allow me to eliminate OCAD from my quick map process. Yay!

Sounds like there is a way. Jagge could do it in an hour but my eyes glazed over. I would need this process for "dummies" like me. JJ's comment about not dealing with a reservoir properly, I would think, is relatively easy to deal with.

OSM data usually isn't good/accurate enough to be combined with lidar. If road/track is 50m off, knolls and oher stuff end up the wrong side of the road. Better check first how accurate the data is agains some aerials and then use only accurate enough elements.

I just did an other rapid map, now with lidar water - not that urban really but map anyway:
https://picasaweb.google.com/lh/photo/ADEriWRzvuVZ...