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

[Paul Norman]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Frederik Ramm [mailto:frederik at remote.org]
> Sent: Monday, November 26, 2012 8:00 AM
> To: talk-us at openstreetmap.org
> Subject: Re: [Talk-us] Proposed import: Alaska Boroughs/CPDs
> 
> Hi,
> 
> On 11/26/12 05:51, Paul Norman wrote:
> > 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.
> 
> Will these new borders correctly re-use parts of the existing coastline
> and/or state boundary, or will things look like
> 
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=36.26415252685547&lon=-
> 95.7297134399414&zoom=15
> 
> or
> 
> http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=57.16290593147278&lon=-
> 92.50400304794312&zoom=15
> 
> (both featured on "Worst of OSM" in the past)?

As mentioned, they'll reuse the existing country and state boundary (they're
the same for Alaska).

On the coast side it turns out that they're defined going to the limit of
the state submerged lands which is 3 miles away from the coastline so this
isn't an issue and it wouldn't be near any existing boundaries.

The current boundaries are pretty bad, see
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=70.332&lon=-150.568&zoom=10 or
http://www.openstreetmap.org/?lat=70.48&lon=-160.17&zoom=9

Or really, just see anywhere on the north slope. I merged the ways so you
didn't have individually tagged 100 node sections and now it's one properly
done relation, but the geometry is still a horrid mess.

Something I didn't mention was import size. This would be on the order of
35k-37k nodes. That's a lot of nodes for the number of ways, but we're
talking about kilometers between nodes still. Alaska is *huge*.