Striving for Accuracy - from spirit levels to summit analysis programmes

Striving for Accuracy

From spirit levels to summit analysis programmes – how independent surveyors, online mapping and LIDAR revolutionised the drop and absolute height of hills

The differentiation between one hill and another and how to use objectivism in criteria has dominated hill listing for many years.  The two mainstays of criteria are minimum height and minimum drop, using these will produce a list of hills that is relatively simple in concept and understood by lay-person and hill bagger alike.

However, the status of hills is not just the domain of spot heights on available mapping; it is now heavily influenced by accuracy produced by independent surveyors using level and staff and GNSS receivers.  These forms of equipment have revolutionised the accuracy of height and drop and therefore the status of hills.

It isn’t just independent surveyors that help in striving for accuracy, online mapping has taken a much needed forward step over recent years, but this is forever changing with useful mapping appearing and sometimes as quickly disappearing.

The accuracy attained by independent surveyors is now matched by LIDAR, this latter aid for hill list compilers and those interested in numerical data has revolutionised the game and probably nothing will ever be the same again.

But is there a thread that can be followed when the accuracy nowadays expected can be traced back to when things were simpler, but nevertheless a time when accuracy was still strived for.

Striving for Accuracy – from spirit levels to summit analysis programmes is the latest instalment from Mapping Mountains Publications and attempts to document such a thread, following it back to the late 1980s and from there to the present day.

Striving for Accuracy – from spirit levels to summit analysis programmes – how independent surveyors, online mapping and LIDAR revolutionised the drop and absolute height of hills is available from Mapping Mountains Publications as an e-booklet.

Download the e-booklet version for use on a PC, laptop, or e-reader.

  

The booklet can be downloaded by clicking on the link below:

·        Striving for Accuracy – from spirit levels to summit analysis programmes – e-booklet version