Re: USA polygons

I will upgrade the USA polygons from version 2013 to version 2016 this week. I currently have a test version imported where I will try to see if there are any big changes.

I have heard via http://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=11743/alaskan-wade-hampton-renamed-to-kusilvak-census-area&show=11750#a11750 that at least one county has changed its name.

Documenting former state names here:


Number of regions: 51

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

New state names (I see no difference with my eyes):



Number of regions: 51

Alabama
Alaska
Arizona
Arkansas
California
Colorado
Connecticut
Delaware
District of Columbia
Florida
Georgia
Hawaii
Idaho
Illinois
Indiana
Iowa
Kansas
Kentucky
Louisiana
Maine
Maryland
Massachusetts
Michigan
Minnesota
Mississippi
Missouri
Montana
Nebraska
Nevada
New Hampshire
New Jersey
New Mexico
New York
North Carolina
North Dakota
Ohio
Oklahoma
Oregon
Pennsylvania
Rhode Island
South Carolina
South Dakota
Tennessee
Texas
Utah
Vermont
Virginia
Washington
West Virginia
Wisconsin
Wyoming

A select distinct from polygons where country in (USA, tmpUSA) confirms that there are 51 even after that. No name changes.

3142 counties both before and after.

The mentioned Wade Hampton Census Area does not exist anymore, but Kusilvak Census Area does, as expected.

Some sql magic says that there are 3145 unique county names when combining the old and new names. Some more SQL magic tells us which three has changed names.

Old names:
Petersburg Census Area (AK)
Wade Hampton Census Area (AK)
Shannon County (SD)

New names:
Kusilvak Census Area (AK)
Oglala Lakota County (SD)
Petersburg Borough (AK)

Some guessing says this:
Petersburg Census Area (AK) -> Petersburg Borough (AK)
Wade Hampton Census Area (AK) -> Kusilvak Census Area (AK)
Shannon County (SD) -> Oglala Lakota County (SD)

Polygons will be imported for real today. It will take a day or so to convert the data. Meanwhile some caches might belong to the old county names and some to the new.

Also with updated polygons we can assume that some borders has been adjusted and that some geocaches might switch state/county. The new polygons are a bit larger (not even 1%) indicating more vertices.

Updating geocache data is taking quite some time. This far about 50% of the regions/states has been updated, but only a few percent of the counties. Ones the states are done we can expect the counties to be twice as fast at least, but it really feels like it will take a week.

Just wanted to post a status follow up. States are done a long time ago. Counties are about 85% done, less than 300k left of the 2M+.

I don't think there is any other country being this expensive to calculate. There are many factors for it, the amount of geocaches of course, but also the size and complexity of the polygons. The US polygon data is very precise which makes it expensive. They are also in the top two in the world of the amount of geocaches and covers a very large geographical area.