Incomplete municipality boundaries (admin_level=7) in Beirut Southern Suburbs (Ghobeiry area)

Hello everyone,

I am using administrative boundaries from OpenStreetMap (via a NextGIS GeoJSON export) for the Beirut Southern Suburbs, mainly in Baabda District.

When I filter to boundary=administrative and admin_level=7, I see that some municipalities are mapped correctly, for example:
Bourj el Barajneh → appears as an admin_level=7 polygon
Laylake → appears as an admin_level=7 polygon

But other well-known municipalities in the same urban area appear to be missing as polygons, and only present as settlements/points, for example:
Ghobeiry (غبيري) – appears as a place/settlement, not an admin_level=7 polygon
– Possibly parts of Haret Hreik / Chiyah side, etc.

On a map of only admin_level=7 polygons, this creates visible “holes” between Bourj el Barajneh and the surrounding municipalities, even though in reality the urban area is continuous and those municipalities exist.

My questions:

  1. Should these missing municipalities (e.g. Ghobeiry) be mapped as admin_level=7 in Lebanon?

  2. Are there any public, non-copyrighted official boundary datasets for Beirut Southern Suburbs that we can use as a reference?

  3. Has any project or mapper already started working on municipal boundaries for this area?

I’m happy to help improve the data if someone can confirm the correct tagging (admin_level values) and suggest acceptable data sources. I can also share screenshots showing the admin_level=7 polygons with the “holes” between Bourj el Barajneh and neighboring areas.

Thank you for your help,
Mhamad Hasan

Hi and welcome here.

You can check the history of the existing boundaries, the source used might be indicated, or you can contact the original mappers and ask them.

Regards.