[OSM-talk] maritime borders (was: administrative boundaries and is_in)

[Igor Brejc]

Robin Paulson wrote:
> On 11/01/2008, Martijn van Oosterhout <kleptog at gmail.com> wrote:
>   
>> - The border of a country is not the coastline, but (at the very
>> least) 12 nautical miles from the coastline and in some places, much
>> further than that.
>>     
>
> ok, let's say i wanted to use this as a basis for drawing the national
> boundary for a country. i appreciate that part of the border will be
> more than 12nm away from the coast (depending on the depth of the
> ocean floor, yes?), but it's a good start
>   
Just as a curiosity: 12 NM was chosen because it it the farthest point a 
person can see from the shore (due to Earth's roundness). Or something 
like that :)
> does some enterprising coder want to come up with a way of
> automagically drawing the border at a 12nm offset to the coastline?
> anywhere that the border is different, i would be happy to edit it
> manually, if a large part of it was being done by programmatic means
>
>   
That would be an interesting thing to implement. It would involve 
creating a union of circles (with radius of 12 NM) and then determining 
the border of that union. If only I had the time... :)

Igor