[Talk-us] Proposed import: Alaska Boroughs/CPDs

[Paul Norman]

In Alaska the Boroughs and CPDs are the equivalent of counties. 

I recently cleaned up much of the Canada/Alaska border and in the process
looked at the counties data.

I have come to the conclusion that it is better and easier to remove the
existing counties data and reimport from TIGER 2012.

Additionally Alaska created new counties in 2007 and 2008 and these are not
reflected in the existing data.

Before I did my edits the counties were essentially untouched. Now they're
half-fixed but many remain a mess, particularly in coastal regions where
there is poor alignment. The majority of the data is in regions where the
population density is minimal and we are unlikely to get any eyes on the
ground.

There is more detail at
http://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Alaska/TIGER_Counties, but in brief the
import will be more accurate, not override any existing contributions except
mine and be better tagged.

I started a discussion about the tagging of boroughs/CPDs which are not
exactly like counties at
http://lists.openstreetmap.org/pipermail/talk-us/2012-November/009563.html
but it shouldn't be difficult to come back later and retag if required as
there are a total of 29 objects that could potentially need retagging. It
would be a lot easier to retag them post import then to try to retag the
current data.

I will have to integrate the data with the existing Canada/Alaska border and
will preserve that as it is based on the extremely accurate IBC data.