Cameron de Lîle was awarded recognition at Nationals for his mapping project which is aiming to create a highly detailed (1:10,000 scale) map of all of New Zealand. 

The first lockdown inspired the start of this project when Cameron discovered some software called Karttapullautin on a Finnish MapAnt website which has a high resolution map of all of Finland. The software adds LiDar points and generates a detailed map. Cameron made some scripts to start downloading NZ LiDar and put it through a programme to make a similar tiled interactive map of New Zealand. 

What the data spits out is very accurate contours and will be an excellent base to start an orienteering map.  Cameron has probably spent around 100 hours on the project on and off over 2 years and is looking for some help with the rest of the processing and refining.  He realises the potential to get a large audience involved to help it out further and so he set-up a Facebook page and it has been successful in getting the project further along . The whole project has potential to be commercialised as long as orienteers have access to the data as a priority. At the moment the New Zealand tiled map is about 25% completed, and Cameron set a precedent to download the areas around urban centres first such as Auckland, Wellington & Christchurch. The East Cape and Nelson are largely done, and Northland data was downloaded when the project first started in the first lockdown in 2020. 

In 2021, about 10 people hopped aboard to help by assigning computers to process he LiDar files and download information. The Christmas/January break is an ideal time to set computers to work when many are largely idle. 

For those planning events or trips the accuracy of the map tiles is incredible. You can zoom into an area and see land features in detail such as cliffs, fault lines and vegetation density. Cameron is excited about areas in Waikato that have huge potential for future events near to Auckland. 

So how you can help? Perhaps you can…
    •    Find some free storage space for data
    •    Offer to help process information for more maps
    •    Help to project manage it for a time
    •    Give some ideas on monetisation 
    •    Join the facebook group and offer support

Have a listen:
Gene Beveridge interviewed Cameron, November 2020
https://genebeveridge.nz/podcast/nav-chat-2/

Have a look : http://omap.nz/

Join Omap on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/nzomap. The accuracy of the map tiles is incredible. You can zoom into an area and see land features in detail such as cliffs, fault lines and vegetation density. Cameron is excited about areas in Waikato that have huge potential for future events near to Auckland. 

So how you can help? Perhaps you can…
    •    Find some free storage space for data
    •    Offer to help process information for more maps
    •    Help to project manage it for a time
    •    Give some ideas on monetisation 
    •    Join the facebook group and offer support