Cave Survey Archive

Any serious research which deals with caves requires the use of a survey, or map, of the caves. The Society has, therefore, carried out a great deal of survey work and has published in its Proceedings a large number of cave surveys.

However, the use of computers has made it possible to use survey data in new and different ways. We are therefore making available data from our archives in formats that might be used in novel ways to view aspects of cave layout and structure. In the first instance, we are making available Survex 3D files of certain caving areas. Survex is probably the most commonly used cave survey software in the UK and its viewer is one of the most flexible and easy to use. You can download Survex for free. Alternatively, the files can be viewed using the “Therion” viewer. Therion can also be downloaded, from here, for free. As well as Survex, itself, the output has benefitted from the use of Mike McCombe’s TerrainTool to add surface detail. TerrainTool is hosted by the Society on Mike’s behalf.

Although the output files are being made freely available, for the underlying data this cannot always be the case. This is partially because much of the data has been contributed by others and we do not hold copyright on it, plus we have not found a non-labour intensive way to do it. We will continue to endeavour to release as much data as possible, both on this page as a static snapshot, but also the ’live’ versioned repository on the BCA Cave Data Archive, maintained by the Cave Surveying Group.