# A third of mapping camps found efficient, mostly on their own terms

> A research poster from the School of Underlying Conditions asks which geological field mapping camps remain efficient once their neighbours set the terms of the comparison.

Twelve field mapping camps out of thirty-six returned a perfect efficiency score, and eight of them reached it by a route their neighbours would not have taken. That is the result set out in _Efficient in Their Own Eyes: Cross-efficiency appraisal of thirty-six geological field mapping camps_, a research poster by Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, and Dr Vigdis Emenike, Senior Lecturer, both of the School of Underlying Conditions, with Dr Joost Nwosu, Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Continuous Improvement.

> Several colleagues have asked me which camp was the best one. It is a fair thing to ask and the poster does not say, and I would be glad to hear from anyone who believes it ought to.
>
> --- Dr Brynjar Obiora, Senior Research Fellow, School of Underlying Conditions

The poster brings an established benchmarking approach to the season returns of one archived mapping programme, relating the days and distances each camp consumed to the ground it covered, the outcrops it described and the samples it sent back. Each camp is first appraised in the light most favourable to it, and then again in the light most favourable to each of the others, so that a standing arrived at alone can be held against a standing conferred by peers. Four camps kept theirs. Five were found to have done a great deal of one thing.

The University regards it as a credit to its earth sciences school that a question about the conduct of fieldwork should have been put to the fieldwork's own paperwork. Dr Nwosu said the collaboration had been "a welcome occasion to learn what a vehicle-kilometre is, from people who have driven a good many of them".

The full poster is available from the University's research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.yigcbx.