Orienteering is a sport in which participants are required to navigate from check point to check point in diverse terrain using a map and a compass. There are a number of requirements (such as the size of the plot of land, the percent of elevation of the terrain, easy access for commuters, and so forth) that must be met before an area can be deemed fit for the sport. From there, a cartographer is brought in to map the selected location. The goal of this project was to find locations that are suitable for a cartographer to map.
Our team worked together on the mapping portion of the project then divvied up the accompanying discussion sections. This worked best for us because it ensured that everyone knew what was happening in terms of mapping and had a say in the results. This also eliminated the issue of analysis steps being done twice or missed if each of us had worked on the map separately.
Some issues that we faced when acquiring data was that a lot of material we found was older. For example, the shapefile of Greater Vancouver was from 1999. Other data that we were looking for, such as tree density, was proprietary. This hindered our analysis and left room for error in our final product. I found that while open source data is convenient, it may not always be the most reliable. On the other hand, proprietary data may be more accurate, but, like in our case, may go unused because it is harder to access.
Below are the different components of this analysis.
- The flowchart of analysis done.
- The map that resulted from this analysis.
- The discussion of analysis and results.
As a result of this project, I discovered a sport that I would have otherwise never known about. I think that it is interesting that the specifications for mapping set forth by this sport requires not only maps to be made of the terrain but also maps that pinpoint where maps should be made.
In working on this project, I learned how use new tools that I had previously not been familiar with such as adding X,Y data to excel spreadsheets in order to use that information in ArcMap. For the most part, there was a lot of trial and error when using tools that were unfamiliar. This made the end result more satisfying because it was something that we had spent a lot of time and effort in figuring out. The map aesthetics was something that I spent a lot of time on. Trying to get the halo effect on the words and drawing in the leader lines to try to make the map clearer and more user friendly.