Boundary problems

Communities Nepal
1

I checked a bit the nwash-map.

There are boundaries displayed. I looked in Karnali/Dailekh/Dullu.

Within this municipality nwash shows 13 inner boundaries. These are wards, I think.

But our mapped boundaries there (admin_level=9) are different?!

And there are still VDC boundaries (admin_level=8) in our map. I think, they should be made invisible (or deleted).

It seems, all mapped admin_level=9 boundaries are based on the mapping of seichter in 2016. But his data source does no longer exist.

Can we get these data from the nwash-map?

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2

Yes, It has always been in my mind. Previous VDCs( admin_level=8) must be made invisible. I removed them in some districts and added Wards (admin_level=9).

I am very slow in editing boundary relations, it always creates conflicts with waterways since they are overlapped with admin boundaries.

Also, the Department of Survey, Nepal (NationalMappingOrganization) only provides free shapefile data upto Municipality level (admin_level=7), it doesn’t provide data of wards level (admin_level=9). But ward level data of some municipality can be found freely elsewhere may in their own websites.

I don’t think we can download thes admin boundary data from N-wash. But what can I do is I can write a letter to some officials of Survey Department for providing shapefile upto ward level.

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3

Seichter contacted me in in PM.

He would not delete the admin_level=8 boundaries now. They can be useful when mapping ward boundaries. That makes sense.

So I propose for the admin_level=8 boundaries:

  • we change the tag „boundary=administrative“ to „disused:boundary=administrative“.

  • like this these boundaries are no longer visible in the map

  • but mappers still have these boundaries in the editor and can use them for the ward mapping.

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4

Since ward do have a number and a name, I propose to map them like this:

type=boundary

boundary=administrative

admin_level=9

name= „the name of the ward“

ward=“the number of the ward“

5

I found here ward boundaries of Doti district.

The pdf-file can be used to map ward boundaries. Only ward names are missing.

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6

And here are pdf-files of wards in all districts.

Can we use this data?

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7

Actually, wards don’t have name they have only numbers. Each rural municipality, urban municipality, sub-meteopolitan city and metropolitan city are divided into number of wards which are just numbers but they are simply named with the name of municipality. Example: Kathmandu-01, Kathmandu-02,… etc.

8

Also, one good news. I have received the shapefile for the whole country Nepal from one of the officials from Survey Department, Nepal
You can download and extract from this drive link:

This link might go dead after few days, so download as soon as you see this message.

9

Yes, I made the download and had a look. There are ward numbers but no ward names. Mappers have mapped some wards with names??

10

Do you agree to map the boundaries like this?
type=boundary
boundary=administrative
admin_level=9
ward=“the number of the ward"

11

Yes, I agree with the classification with additional name tag.
In context of Nepal, the ward numbers are actually used as names in combined with Municipality name. So, I think the ‘name’ tag should be filled with ‘Ward No. Value’.
.i.e.
type=boundary
boundary=administrative
admin_level=9
name= ‘MunicipalityName’-‘the number of the ward’
ward= ‘the number of the ward’

Example:
For boundary relation of ward no 1 of Kathmandu metropolitan city.

type=boundary
boundary=administrative
admin_level=9
name= Kathmandu-01
ward= 01

12

That is a good solution.
I started yesterday in Darchula district. You see here the results:

13

Can you share me the process of how do you edit such boundary relations. I feel I do that in quite complex way. You had once shared me the process of editing highways and that was very helpful.
@Heinz_V

14

Boundaries are a more complex work. I will try to describe the process and send you an PM.

15

If the river or stream is the reference boundary for administrative boundary then what should we do ?

  1. should we overlap the admin boundary with that river or stream.
  2. or should we place the admin boundary few centimeters away on either side of the stream.
    What’s your recommendation?
    @Heinz_V @marek_kleciak
16

I mapped really a lot boundaries in India. And I personally do not merge boundaries to anything else.

Sometimes boundaries are defined in the middle of river/streams. But they can also be on the left or right bank of a river.

In heavy weather the waterways can change their course. But boundaries normally do not change.

If you make changes to boundaries which are merged to other objects, you really have to take care that you do not create conflicts. And newbies may not be able to handle conflicts.

Eberything concerning boundaries is much easier if they have separate ways.

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17

Dear Anil, we had a very long discussion in the polish community and the result was: do not glue admin boundaires with anything. This because in that way the boundaries are safer: The probability to be destroyed by new users (especially iD users) is lower. I think we can use this good practice in Nepal as well.

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18

I changed for all admin_level=8 boundaries the tag „boundary=administrative“ to „disused:boundary=administrative“.

So these boundaries are no longer visible in the map.

But we still have thousands of ways with „boundary=administrative“ and „admin_level=8“. I do do not know a simple way, to change these cases also.

And for all boundaries: the way segments dont need any tags, because the boundaries are completely defined by the relations!!

19

Yes, I saw you changed all the boundary relations of admin_level= 8 to disused: boundary.
You did it for the whole country in very short time, is there a shortcut to do this at once for the whole country? If there’s shortcut please share :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye::grinning::grinning::grinning:. @Heinz_V

I think the ways with admin_level=8 can be converted into admin_level=9 one by one while adding ward level boundaries.

20

I did it like this:

  1. Download all admin_level=8 boundaries into JOSM by an overpass query.

  2. In the relation window of JOSM: Mark all the relations

  3. go to the tag window (above)

  4. change there the boundary tag

  5. upload

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