Hi folks,
we previously lamented the absence of importable open data sets which could be used to set up all current local government and local electoral boundaries in Northern Ireland.
However, I offered the view that an (admittedly rather laborious) workaround is possible: nearly 100% of these boundaries use the centuries old Townland boundaries, and the latter are all drawn on OSM.
So by looking up a few public reference sources, it is possible to figure out which townland boundaries currently serve as local government administrative & electroral boundaries, and tag them accordingly
(The few bits that aren’t are mostly in urban areas where they’ve decided to use modern roads as boundaries instead - but again these are already all drawn on OSM, so with a bit of headscratching, the appropriate tagging can be figured out.)
Anyways:
I’ve tried to put my notion into practice, and picked my local council as a try-out.
I did it entirely manually in the iD editor, so my ability to troubleshoot the resulting relations for bugs (missed ways, unclosed polygons etc) is rather limited.
Would anyone who is more au fait with the appropriate tools like to check these results…? -
- At the top level, we have Newry, Mourne & Down District Council https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/15812155
- This is divided up into 41 ‘electoral wards’ Relation: Newry, Mourne & Down electoral wards (15897000) | OpenStreetMap
- The electoral wards are then grouped into 7 ‘District Electoral Areas’ Relation: Newry, Mourne & Down DEAs (16219661) | OpenStreetMap
