CAVEGEOMAP: AN OPEN SOURCE CAVE MAPPING CODE

One of the most important fields in speleology is the cave cartography. It is after the cartography is done, that the cave can then be studied in more detail by using the cave map as a reference. The necessary cave survey to produce a map can be done by using underground/mobile LIDAR but this can be very expensive. As an alternative, one can use a digital laser distance measurer, clinometer and a compass to obtain the measurements of the cave, however this method is time consuming and as a result fewer measurements are usually obtained. The main objective of this work is to create a user-friendly software that uses as few measurements as possible to create 2-D and 3-D maps of the cave. CaveGeoMap is a Matlab® code developed that uses these measurements to create 2-D and 3-D maps of the cave with minimal user interaction. The 2-D profile and top-view maps use the basic cave cartography measurements per station. To obtain the 3-D map of the cave the code uses distances measured as a function of azimuth and inclination, for a total of 54 measurements per station. The measurements are treated as data points from a two variable piecewise-function that are then used to interpolate this function as the cave surface. CaveGeoMap evaluates the given measurements using Spatial Analysis and uses the data itself to estimate the necessary variables to produce the 2-D and 3-D cave maps. In conclusion, CaveGeoMap is user-friendly and easy software that only requires the data collected as an input for the creation of the maps.