OpenStreetMap: Admin_level for All Countries
wiki.openstreetmap.org
wiki.openstreetmap.org
It powers painless adding of maps to so many products, painless offline data analytics and joins (I built https://wildpocket.com/ by joining OSM to iNaturalist data).
Truly incredible and under appreciated by general public. I love street complete, it opens up OSM to so many beginners with the simple UX. I think there's an ongoing need for "beginner-friendly" OSM tools - I've prototyped https://mapmender.com/ to help map the "last mile" routes for emergency response that are inherently hard to keep updated. It's a WIP passion project, feedback welcome
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/List_of_OSM-based_servic...
Fun fact: when you think of boundary disputes, two things tend to be assumed. One, this only happens in 'certain' countries. Two, this always means more than one country claims the same piece of land.
As for one: even the Netherlands and Germany claim the same bit of sea. Boundary status: unresolved (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/19478817#map=12/53.56...), but don't worry, we're friends and allies these days.
As for two: because of complex reasons to with their eventual bullshit bargaining position, there are several slivers of land wedged between the respectively claimed borders of Serbia and Croatia which belong to… nobody¹ (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/19478817). Although the local Serbian border patrols will gladly point their rifles in your general direction to point out that this does not, in fact, mean you get to be there as far as they're concerned.
1: Head-line grabbing claims by assorted dreamers notwithstanding; hence Verdis.
Usually these weird chunks of land that lay unclaimed are usually the result of agreements or contests around more valuable chunks of land that cause voids in the border - sometimes just due to historical oversight.
California entered the union in 1850 and it's north-eastern boundary was defined a specific way(120 degrees west of Greenwich), Nevada entered 14 years later and it's western boundary was defined with a different method(43 degrees west of Washington), at the time it was thought these two methods were equivalent, but this was later proved otherwise. It appears the main strip got resolved but there is still a weird triangular strip of land on the diagonal claimed by both sides. There were also a number of surveying mistakes, but the root of the problem appears to be the accepted but incompatible definitions. It turns out that congress has no authority to change state borders once they are set(Somehow this both surprised me and made total sense at the same time), so the states themselves have to resolve it. There is currently an "agreement" on how to interpret the border, but neither state has changed it's constitution so the dispute is still technically ongoing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe#Interstate_boundary...
On the subject of eyeballing maps are there any online openstreetmap derivatives that have better cartography tools? (crosshair, lat long at specific point, distance and bearing lines, etc) I probably could install qgis for it, and osmand has a bunch of these tools. but the default osm page sort of sucks here.
The latest California constitution just says to reference the original 1849 for the boundaries https://archives.cdn.sos.ca.gov/pdf/1849-california-constitu...
Nevada https://www.leg.state.nv.us/Const/NVConst.html#Art14 amended in 1982, but the original 1864 document has the same geographic description with a different starting point for some reason.
The funny thing I found in the Nevada constitution was
"All territory lying West of and adjoining the boundary line herein prescribed, which the State of California may relinquish to the Territory or State of Nevada, shall thereupon be embraced within and constitute a part of this State."
We reluctantly agree to your existing borders, but we really wanted the Sierra Nevada ridgeline to be the border and if you want to give it to us we are going to put it right in the constitution to accept it. The passive aggressive tone in such a formal document just kills me.
The Wa State in particular appears to have undergone some "boundary fixing" a few weeks ago https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/9399863 but whether it now accurately reflects realities on the ground is anyone's guess. I'm inclined to believe the Wikimedia map https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Myanmar_civil_war.sv... showing Tangyan in Wa State territory is more up-to-date, unless they withdrew for some reason without it making the news. (The most recent I could find is this article from March where they were mining quartz in the area: https://english.shannews.org/archives/29385 )
It's amazing that something like this exists.
Nice to see someone is keeping track of all of this in a logical way for all countries.
> Note: It has been decided not to add administrative boundaries of [super-national administrations] in OpenStreetMap. So please don't use admin_level=1.
Damn, I was hoping to see groups of countries (admin_level=1), and then groups of planets (admin_level=0), and then groups of stars (admin_level=-1), and then groups of galaxies (admin_level=-2). L. Ron Hubbard has surely established governments at all of these levels!