Map of Yorkshire Caves

[Cave_Troll]

it would be nice to see surveys... Hummmm another whole can of worms there

It would be good if it could make us a cup of tea as well, but saying so isn't particularly useful.

Cups of tea aren't subject to copyright. back in the early days of the web i tried putting surveys online and was asked to take them down by the copyright owners. I'd love to see an online map with surveys overlayed so you can see the relationship between the caves.

Also it seems we've got yet another case of everyone trying to do the same thing.
Well not everyone, but you've got four or five different "cave entrances on internet map" type applications appearing.
Of course i'm sure there will be the normal "live earth is better than google earth" type arguments and then the "my implimentation is better than yours".

I would have thought that it was inevitable that when new technology became available, people would look at how its potential could be used in their particular area of interest. Would you prefer for people not to bother at all? Or would it be better if when one person had a go, everybody should leave him / her to it? All power to Andy's elbow for having a go, and I wish him the very best with it.

so do i . I like this and would love to see it developed. perhaps we could have all the caves in the country with surveys added on.

My main concern is that I believe that information should only be published when it has been verified that it is accurate. Otherwise we are left with another load of wrong crap on the web misleading people. In this case, a lot of data has been made available before it has been validated.

not that it matters , i'm sure in 4 months time you'll have found something else interesting.

What an extraordinary thing to say.

not really. See virtually every other project on the net that has died after the initial excitement. see the UKCaving wiki for example. see the online guides to my local caves  that i tired to create 10 years ago.

I was not rubbishing anyones attempts at the projects we've seen links to.
The sad fact is that i'd be surprised if they were still in active development / maintenance in a short while.

 

[footleg]

A good effort. It is obvious that there is interest in making and using these sorts of maps. One problem as already mentioned by others is the quality of the data. I have been interested for some time in putting together an open public database of cave locations (for caves where there is no issue with publicising the location) so that people can use that resource to drive sites like this. One possibility I looked into was the BCA national cave registry project, but at present that has not got to the stage where it is ready to act as a central respository of verified cave locations. I have personally collected GPS coordinates for a few entrances around the Yorkshire Dales, which I am happy to publish. What appears to be lacking from any of the online cave databases so far is an indication of the source of the data and whether anyone has independantly confirmed it is correct. Without this, you cannot be sure that data has been released into the public domain, or whether it is accurate.

So meanwhile to keep me busy, I have been working on the Matienzo expedition data which is managed in a way which covers these issues. Take a look at http://www.geography.lancs.ac.uk/Matienzo/indexnmf.htm if you are interested. There is a link near the top of the page to show all caves on one map, but be warned it takes a while to load as there are around 2800 entrance markers! (Firefox 2 copes much better than IE6). I am in the process of preparing cave survey overlays, which will hopefully be appearing on the map soon.

 

[langcliffe]

Cups of tea aren't subject to copyright. back in the early days of the web i tried putting surveys online and was asked to take them down by the copyright owners.

Good - there's too many people abusing copyright, and stealing other people's material. I find a request first is rarely refused providing that the source is acknowledged.

 

[Cave Mapper]

Credits page added

 

[footleg]

Let me know if you would like all my GPS data for West Kingsdale plus some of the Easegill entrances.

 

[Cave Mapper]

Let me know if you would like all my GPS data for West Kingsdale plus some of the Easegill entrances.

Yes please, that would be great. Anyone else?

 

[langcliffe]

The position of many of the entrances don't actually need GPS readings, but can be pinpointed far more accurately by eye. Take, as just one example, Pikedaw Cavern, the entrance of which can be readily seen on the photograph but the position on the cave map is currently 70 to 80 m out.  Admittedly this is a more time-consuming procedure than typing in coordinates on trust, but if a job is worth doing...

Moreover, whilst GPS readings are useful as a first pass, I don't accept that the latitude and longitude coordinates required by Google Map are necessarily definitive. They certainly don't coincide with those used by MS Virtual Earth, and at least one of them must be wrong. This means that any GPS readings will need some form of visual correction.

 

[underground]

In response to cave_troll's comments - this is a prime example of the uselessness of the 'they should' mentality. Flooded in Rotherham with no insurance? 'They should have done something to stop it'. Second hand washer that they provided as a charitable gesture knackered? 'They should have bought me a new one'.

Who are 'they'? 'They' are anyone who is not you, someone to make the effort.

'Someone should put all the surveys on Google earth'...... Go on then mate, be the driving force behind it and make it work, then start moaning if no-one does owt. At least these guys are using the technology, pioneering it, and building a foundation for a consolidated effort. It's only the virtue of the inclusiveness on the internet that we all know what they're doing.

 

[Cave Mapper]

The position of many of the entrances don't actually need GPS readings, but can be pinpointed far more accurately by eye ...

Google Earth is a really good tool for this, you can drag placemarks with the mouse until they are in the right spot, then save them as KML (or KMZ) files. I've just done this for Great Douk and a few others in Chapel-le-Dale. Would anyone like to do it for the Alum Pot area and email me the kml?

 

[langcliffe]

Google Earth is a really good tool for this, you can drag placemarks with the mouse until they are in the right spot

Absolutely - but a little correction is still required, as the position indicated by a placemarker on Google Maps does not coincide precisely with the position indicated by the icons available with the Google Map API.

 

[Goydenman]

Check this out:

http://CaveMaps.org

Well done great utility. I went onto the Nidderdale section and noticed quite a few of the pots are out by quite a bit. Sent you a map showing where the pots are hope that helps - do not know the Lats/Longs

 

[footleg]

The position of many of the entrances don't actually need GPS readings, but can be pinpointed far more accurately by eye ...

Google Earth is a really good tool for this, you can drag placemarks with the mouse until they are in the right spot, then save them as KML (or KMZ) files. I've just done this for Great Douk and a few others in Chapel-le-Dale. Would anyone like to do it for the Alum Pot area and email me the kml?

The thing you are overlooking here is copyright. I think that technically you are breaching copyright of the mapping or aerial photography if you use it to derive data. Where as GPS coordinates for places I have gone and measured myself means I can publish and use the data freely. If you think this is not so, then consider this scenario. You use the googlemap data to determine the positions of roads, buildings, rivers and other features, so you can create your own maps. Then you publish those maps as your own. The original data owner for the aerial photography has most likely NOT given permission for you to make a derivative work from their data, and you could be taken to court over it. This happened to the AA in a famous case which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#_note-1

Determining the GPS coordinates of visible features from Googlemaps or Google Earth is the same thing.

 

[langcliffe]

The thing you are overlooking here is copyright. I think that technically you are breaching copyright of the mapping or aerial photography if you use it to derive data. Where as GPS coordinates for places I have gone and measured myself means I can publish and use the data freely. If you think this is not so, then consider this scenario. You use the googlemap data to determine the positions of roads, buildings, rivers and other features, so you can create your own maps. Then you publish those maps as your own. The original data owner for the aerial photography has most likely NOT given permission for you to make a derivative work from their data, and you could be taken to court over it. This happened to the AA in a famous case which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap_street#_note-1

Determining the GPS coordinates of visible features from Googlemaps or Google Earth is the same thing.

I'm not convinced. Extracting information from a map, or a book is fair use. How many times do you see NGR coordinates being used? And there's no one more litigious than the Ordnance Survey.

In this particular case, all that one is doing is establishing the location of a point from Google Map or the Ordnance Survey, and then displaying that point on Google Map, which is what they published the API for. In fact as far as Google Maps is concerned, two versions are being used. The first is the desk-top version which offers positive facilities to allow you to acquire location data, and the second is the API version which is used to display the location data. It's the same map in both cases - just different interfaces.

In the case of your example, there may be a copyright breach. I haven't thought about, and don't intend to as it is totally inapplicable to the discussion.

 

[Cave Mapper]

The thing you are overlooking here is copyright. I think that technically you are breaching copyright of the mapping or aerial photography if you use it to derive data.

We're not copying the map, we're using it in exactly the way that Google have designed it to be used. There is no copyright issue.

 

[footleg]

The thing you are overlooking here is copyright. I think that technically you are breaching copyright of the mapping or aerial photography if you use it to derive data.

We're not copying the map, we're using it in exactly the way that Google have designed it to be used. There is no copyright issue.

I agree that using the Googlemap to display information as you are doing poses no problems at all. My argument was concerning using the Googlemap to determine information (spotting the positions of features using the photographic data) and then publishing that data elsewhere outside the googlemap page. i.e. Determining cave locations from satellite photography and then publishing the locations as GPS coordinates in a guide book). I was not implying that yours (or anyone elses) google map based websites are breaching anyones copyright.

 

[bill chadwick]

Interesting debate ...

For www.bdcc.co.uk I used, with their consent, the CSCC access guide in XML form (available at http://cscc.org.uk/CSCCAccessGuide.xml). This is simply an XML export from the CSCC's Microsoft Access database. This database at least records last modification dates for access details.

What the UK caving community need to use is perhaps GeoRSS (georss.org) with a UK cave specific microformat extension or KML, again with a microformat. Is defining something like this an activity the BCA should get involved with? Do they have an Officer's post with this kind of interest / remit?

The few cave survey overlays on www.bdcc.co.uk are either scanned from Mendip Underground (with the permission of one of its authors) and the MCG, again with permission. I suspect that for a Google Maps type cave overlay display we just want solid outline surveys as per Mendip Underground (for Upper Flood, Therion was used to make a special output for web use). The resolution of online aerial imagery generally runs to a scale often only fit for use with outline scale cave surveys. Here is Swildon's Hole - http://tinyurl.com/2uk9me

Building a UK repository of such overlays for display on Google Maps or any other API will be a big task. The input surveys need to be accurately georeferenced and will most likely be submitted on the UKOS projection. We would then need server(s) that could merge, reproject (e.g. Google's Mercator projection), tile and webserve. Oh and we probably want a transparent background, some standards for colouring etc. Quite a lot of work ...

I used the free Microsoft MapCruncher to cut tiles from the scanned / Therion images. I had to georeference the scanned images to UKOS by hand, convert the coords to Lat/Lon WGS84 and then paste the exact values into MapCruncher's XML project files. I believe there are some open source projects going on that will enable automatic tile cutting from georeferenced images submitted online. We could use GeoTif or png/jpg with ESRI World or Proj files.

I believe that the OS are scheduled to go live with a web based MAP API in December. This should include 1:50K mapping but is unlikely to include their 1:25K mapping. I do not yet know wether this will use Mercator or UKOS projected mapping. I believe its is going to use something along the lines of the OpenLayers API (http://www.openlayers.org).

And yes in my opinion accurate online cave maps are a goal worth persuing and can only come about from our combined experiences experimenting - so lets all keep on hacking.

 

[bill chadwick]

Oh and I forgot that doing the cave overlays with KML is possible. Indeed there are some demo sites about that do it. However the KML files soon get large and can be slow to render in a browser. The KML files would need to have the nodes in their polygons/polyline prined back to an appropriate resolution).

 

[Cave_Troll]

are the differences betwen OS and mercator actually relevant for the size of the average cave. I would suspect that the errors in the survey would be bigger.

 

[susie]

I agree that using the Googlemap to display information as you are doing poses no problems at all. My argument was concerning using the Googlemap to determine information (spotting the positions of features using the photographic data) and then publishing that data elsewhere outside the googlemap page. i.e. Determining cave locations from satellite photography and then publishing the locations as GPS coordinates in a guide book). I was not implying that yours (or anyone elses) google map based websites are breaching anyones copyright.

So presumably you believe that anyone who publishes a grid reference gained from an Ordnance Survey map in a guide book is in breach of copyright for exactly the same reasons?

Fortunately for the rest of us, it would seem that the Ordnance Survey don't agree. It all comes down to fair use...

 

[Cave_Troll]

The thing you are overlooking here is copyright. I think that technically you are breaching copyright of the mapping or aerial photography if you use it to derive data.

We're not copying the map, we're using it in exactly the way that Google have designed it to be used. There is no copyright issue.

perhaps not copyright but licencse agreements. there might be something in the licencse that says basically that you can look at the pics but not do anything with them. you may have to pay money if you use the pics and derive some perceived bennifit from them like "this is the walk" or "this is how to find our restaraunt"
There are some very odd things in license agreements. a few years ago it turned out that while an individual Mountain Rescue team member can buy a personal licencse for Memorymap which they can use to plot a GPS position on a map on their PDA but only while they were out for a walk on their own. If they happend to be already on the hill and get tasked to look for a missing person , they were not allowed to use their copy of MemMap to guide themselves on Mountain Rescue business.