[Tagging] [OSM-talk] Suez Canal - Coastline or not?
Christoph Hormann
chris_hormann at gmx.de
Wed Feb 1 17:38:35 UTC 2017
On Wednesday 01 February 2017, Rory McCann wrote:
> I recently noticed that the Suez Canal is tagged as a coastline. Is
> this right? Wikipedia is vague, but implies that it's a fresh water
> body? Is a canal like this a coastline separating two continents?
The Suez Canal has been re-tagged as coastline about two years ago IIRC.
It is somewhat special because it has no locks - which is extremely rare
for canals of this size. This however does not really make the canal a
maritime waterbody. The ecological situation is rather complex, see
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suez_Canal#Environmental_impact
and references there for some hints.
Technically having the Suez Canal as coastline and thereby separating
Africa from Eurasia has some smaller advantages (smaller polygons) but
this is not a big deal. Semantically it is an anomaly so it requires
special casing for any applications relying on consistent data (just
like previously existing lakes mapped as coastline did).
The only other comparable structure i know of is the Corinth Canal -
which is not mapped as coastline and which also does not include any
pre-existing inland waterbodies (like the Bitter Lakes in case of the
Suez Canal).
--
Christoph Hormann
http://www.imagico.de/
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