Orienteering Maps in Slovenia

Dusan Petrovic, Ph.D.

University of Ljubljana, Faculty of Civil and Geodetic Engineering Geodetic Institute of Slovenia Jamova 2 1000 Ljubljana Slovenia Fax. +386 1 476 85 45 e-mail: [email protected]

Abstract Orienteering is a sport where maps are of essential importance. Although Slovenia is far from successful nations in world orienteering, we produced more maps in last years than active orienteering runners in our country exist. There are many reasons for this: from geographical and climate conditions, to base maps and also significant number of professional cartographers, active in Slovenian orienteering.

Keywords: orienteering maps, Slovenia, orienteering, OCAD

1. Introduction

Orienteering is a sport, where competitor has to find marked control points in the terrain using only map and compass. Usually it is called as thinking running or cunning running (URL1, 2005). Orienteering offers an intellectual challenge in addition to ordinary physical exercise. It is a sport, suitable for young children, top trained athletes, families, seniors, even for disabled people. And finally, orienteering is the most “cartographic” sport of all sports, since the map is for orienteering like a ball for football.

Orienteering is world-wide recognised sport. International Orienteering Federation (IOF) has more than 60 national member associations, most form Europe, but also from all other parts of the world, where we are faced with rapid development of this sport. IOF organizes regional and world championships, orienteering is also in the program of World Games, world greatest joint competition of non-Olympic sports (URL1, 2005).

Maps are very important in orienteering, in fact, they are essential for it. If we want to get the same conditions for all competitors these maps have to be fully standardised. This is the reason why orienteering maps are probably the most standardised maps in the world. Standardization started in 1960-ies; the recent standard named International Standard for Orienteering Maps (ISOM) was prepared by IOF Map Commission and issued in 2000. Maps for orienteering are thematic maps, presenting small areas very detailed. Maps are “mute”, without geographical names and grids, but with magnetic north lines. ISOM defines scales, content, design, colours and final graphical quality. Besides standards for the most popular “foot-orienteering” (Foot-O) maps, Map commission prepares also specific standards for other types of orienteering, as ski-orienteering (Ski-O), orienteering with mountain bikes (MTB-O) and sprint orienteering, usually taking place in urban areas.

2. Orienteering in Slovenia

Slovenian orienteering runners never reached any significant result in international scene, but we are “famous” as larger producer of orienteering maps (O-maps) in the world; regarding the size of the country and the number of active runners, of course. In fact, there are already almost as many O-maps than active orienteering runners, all made in last 15 years.

Orienteering started in Slovenia relatively late, in beginning of 1980-ies, although it was well developed earlier in all neighbour areas (Austria, Italy, Hungary and Croatia). But, orienteering with partly different rules was popular in Slovenia at mountaineers and scouts. Official topographic maps were mostly used. Since sometimes it was difficult to reach them due to former Yugoslav army restrictions, we often used black and white Xerox copies. Involving orienteering with international rules shortly became obviously that existing maps are not appropriate. In the middle of 1980 first attempts of producing O-maps started, on beginning these were black and white or at most two coloured maps (Petrovic, Jevsevar, 2000). In 1987 with a help of orienteering friends from Serbia the very first official five-coloured orienteering map in Slovenia was made and published. This was map of Roznik (figure 1), recreational hill with park in Ljubljana, very close to the city centre.

Figure 1: First IOF rules based O-map in Slovenia, Rožnik, 1987

Part of map Roznik, that covers city park was mapped by Slovene cartographer and soon quite a lot of young enthusiastic orienteering runners wanted to make their own map through all production steps: field work, drawing on plastics sheets, photochemical copying procedures and finally, offset printing. To follow such interest Slovenian Orienteering Federation prepared some courses, where some experienced O-map makers from different countries (C. Tarabochia from Italy, Z. Lenhart from Bohemia, H. Allwinger from Austria) had been teaching us.

Slovenian Orienteering Federation as national federation for orienteering sports was founded in spring time in 1990 when five ISOM based O-maps have already existed, but until the end of 1990 there were 13 O-maps finished. Of course Slovene mapmakers at that time had also been helped by some foreigner map makers, one of them were Laszlo Zentai.

Begging of producing O-maps using computer technology (OCAD 4™) in 1993 meant an important turning point in production of O-maps in Slovenia (Petrovic, Jevsevar, 2000). Map making became cheaper, faster and graphical quality became less dependent of operator. Since that time every year about 10 new O-maps covering entire area of 20 sq. km have been made. Following such activities in beginning of 2005 Slovenia was covered by 140 O-maps covering area of more than 300 sq. km (URL2, 2005). Nearly half of these area were mapped by Slovene map makers while the other part of area by foreigners. Figure 2 shows the distribution of O-maps in Slovenia. Every map is presented by dot of the same size. It is clearly visible, that the majority of active orienteering clubs came form central ad NW part of Slovenia.

Figure 2: Distribution of O-maps in Slovenia

3. Reasons for large orienteering maps production

Slovenia is the third most forest’s covered country in the Europe: 54,1% of area were covered by forests in 1998, shown on Figure 3; with extremely different geographical, geomorphologic and climate conditions from one to another part of country (Perko, Orozen Adamic, 1998). The dominant tree sorts are beech and spruce.

Figure 3: Forrest covered areas in Slovenia, Corine Land Cover, 2003

Slovenian territory consists of four main geographical units and three typical climate areas (Perko, Orozen Adamic, 1998). W ad SW part of Slovenia, influenced by Adriatic Sea, has mild and wet winters and hot and dry summers. The rainfalls are just enough that landscape is mostly covered by pie and oak forests. Snow in winter time is quite rare and therefore conditions for orienteering are good almost year around, but especially on winter and spring. Summers can be very hot and thorny undergrowth vegetation in forests may reduce speed and visibility drastically. The other parts of Slovenia are not suitable for orienteering in winter time because of risk of snow, while the other seasons are very suitable. Eastern part connects to Panonian basin, where we can find vineyard covered hillocks but also many forests, especially near slow rivers. Central part is mainly hilly with a lot of very steep slopes. Average slope of Slovene territory is 13° while average height is 557 m (Perko, Orozen Adamic, 1998). Northern and north- western parts of Slovenia are covered by Alps ridge with heights up to Triglav, the highest point with 2864 m. But, for orienteering the most important relief characteristics are very detailed and small landscape formations without big height differences. A lot of such terrain can be found in karsts ground, that covers more than 60% of territory of Slovenia. The karsts plateaus are probably one of the most interesting and also difficult terrains for orienteering and therefore some Slovenian o-events on karsts terrain invites a lot of orienteering runners form many European countries.

Legislation for moving through forests is momentary in Slovenia quite favourable. Everyone has a right for free movement in forests without special owner’s permission, except in forests of special importance. We also have only one national part (Triglav national park) with some restrictions for movement in wildness.

Good base maps can drastically shorten the production of O-map and here we can find another Slovenian advantage. In 1960-ies Slovenia was covered with Base topographic maps at a scale 1: 5.000 for 70% of territory, while the rest of areas were covered with maps at scale 1: 10.000 (inserts in Figure 4).

Figure 4: Inserts from Base topographic maps at scales 1: 5.000 and 1: 10.000

Unfortunately in the end of 1990-ies regular renewal stopped, but presentation of relief and hydrography remains useful, since this element don’t change very rapid on the terrain. Besides, in 2001 the entire area of Slovenia was covered with black and white orthophotomaps with resolution 0.5 m. They are updated every three to six year and from 2004 black and white images are replaced with colour ones. In last years there are also some large scale topographic databases in vector form, that can be directly used for O-maps production, like building cadastre, roads database etc. (URL3, 2005), but O-mapmakers use them quite rare.

It is also very important for such successful O-maps production that there are few professional cartographers deeply involved in O-map preparation, which leads to optimal base data choice and effective map production. Nevertheless, through this connection we accepted OCAD ™ as the most popular map production software in the most of cartographic institutions in Slovenian. OCAD ™ is used for teaching and practising purposes at the faculty cartographic courses, for official national and military maps production, for different thematic maps, navigation charts and, of course, for all O-maps. There were also a significant number of diploma theses at the faculty focused in orienteering maps thematic.

4. Current projects

In the end of spring 2005 we have 141 orienteering maps for foot orienteering. 89 of them are made at a scale 1: 10.000 and only 22 at scale 1: 15.00, which is in fact the favourable scale for Foot-O maps. The reason is that a lot of Slovenian maps cover very detailed and difficult karsts terrain where scale 1: 15.000 often doesn’t allow enough reliable terrain presentation. The other 30 maps are made in larger scales, mostly these are school maps or maps for park or sprint orienteering. Since the international standards for sprint O-maps were issued in 2005 (URL1, 2005) most of these maps don’t meet its requirements.

Intensive production of large scale school maps started in 2002, when Slovenian Orienteering Federation initiated a project “Let’s orient Slovenian schools”, supported by Foundation for financing sport organisations in Slovenia (URL2, 2005). Through this project local schools and orienteering clubs can easier get an O-map for teaching around schools and training centres. Since we have reached quite significant number of such maps in many parts of Slovenia we are planning to extend the project also in a league of school O-events, like it is in Switzerland (URL1, 2005). To assure a minimum compatibility of school maps Commission for school competition prepared a national standard for school O-maps and a prototype school O-map, presented in figure 5.

Figure 5: Prototype school O-map

The other three official orienteering disciplines, Ski-O, MTB-O and Trail-O are not so popular in Slovenia as Foot- O yet. But all of them have been prepared. Some Ski-O events were prepared about decade ago and we used official national topographic maps at a scale 1: 25.000 (URL2, 2005). After few winters without enough snow and due to lack of areas with dense network of cross-country ski tracks; Ski-O in Slovenia died away. Trail-O started in Slovenia in 2004; events are prepared using enlarged Foot-O maps. The last orienteering discipline, MTB-O started in Slovenia about five years ago with some events. On the beginning we used existing Foot-O maps, what is not good solution, since a competitor has no information about expected riding speed on different paths. For international MTB-O event in April 2005 we got first MTB-O map according to IOF standards. Insert is in Figure 6.

Figure 6: Insert of MTB-O map

5. Future expectations

The described situation in Slovene is quite fascinating in one point, but partly breaks the development of orienteering. Too much money, energy and time is used for preparing maps and therefore the other important roles are in the second plan, especially work with young kids and support to perspective runners. Unfortunately there are still a lot of unmapped areas, suitable for orienteering and we can expect such massive o-maps production at least few years in ahead. But, using latest technology, the O-map production become quicker and chipper. Direct terrain mapping using GPS receiver is first step, while the next big step is expected when OCAD team will prepare a version for pocket PCs.

References:

Perko, D., Orozen Adamic, M. (ed.). 1998. Slovenia - Regions and People. Založba Mladinska knjiga, Ljubljana ISBN 86-11-15033-3 Petrovic, D., Jevsevar, B. 2000. First 10 Years of Slovenian Orienteering Federation – bulletin. Slovenian Orienteering Federation, Ljubljana. URL1 (2005): International Orienteering Federation, http://www.iof.org (2005-5-5) URL2 (2005): Slovenian Orienteering Federation, http://www.orientacijska-zveza.si (2005-5-5) URL3 (2005): Surveying and Mapping Authority of the Republic of Slovenia, http://www.gu.gov.si (2005-5-5)