Project-GC Q&A - Recent questions tagged boundaries

Add more granular boundary regions in the Singapore map

Mon, 15 Jan 2024 10:29:26 +0000

Currently the Singapore map only supports very coarse grained regions. There are only five regions. It looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/HXxUG4K.png

Singapore can be further subdivided into what the government calls Planning Areas, though colloquially it's more commonly referred to as districts or neighbourhoods.

Here's the wikipedia page for Singapores administrative divisions, showing the hierarchy of Regions > Planning Areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Administrative_divisions_of_Singapore#Other_administrative_subdivisions

Here's the wikipedia page for our Planning Areas: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planning_Areas_of_Singapore

Our government provides boundary data for Planning Areas here, in GeoJSON and KML formats: https://beta.data.gov.sg/collections/2104/view

---

I've built a small tool to visualize my cache finds on a map subdivided by these Planning Areas. It looks like this: https://i.imgur.com/6DFHc1m.png

While it's already useful for me, it'd be nice if a map like this was readily available to other Singaporeans using project-gc. Ideally we'd be able to toggle between subdivisions by region, and by planning areas. Similar to how the US map can be toggled between subdivisions by state and counties.

Finally, if this suggestion is implemented, might I suggest that the map be named "Districts" instead of "Planning Areas"? While the latter is the formal term used by our government, the former is how the locals typically refer to these subdivisions.

LGA boundary changes in NSW

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 05:10:46 +0000

In the past 2 years (and still ongoing in some cases), some local councils in NSW have amalgamated and therefore the "county" boundaries of these Local Government Areas (LGAs) has changed. In Sydney we've reduced down from 38 to 30 councils which makes for some significant movement.

Just wondering how feasible it would be to update these boundaries.

Any plans to implement "Improved Regions" for UK?

Tue, 22 Dec 2015 19:20:30 +0000

I note from http://project-gc.com/Home/CountrySupport that Improved Regions is not implemented for UK. However there exists Open Source boundary data files from the UK's Ordnanace Survey that provides this information royalty free. I've spent a while investigating these polygon files and I'm confident that they meet the criteria used elsewhere. ie: that the boundaries match the existing region boundaries used at Groundspeak.com.

You can see a map of the Groundspeak boundaries on their wiki at https://wiki.groundspeak.com/download/attachments/11173980/ukfullmap.jpg?version=1&modificationDate=1405415769333&api=v2

The Ordnance Survey's Open Data boundary files are available from https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendatadownload/products.html - scroll down to look for the Boundary-Line product. You can interactively compare these boundaries with the Groundspeak boundaries at https://www.ordnancesurvey.co.uk/opendata/viewer/index.html and select the boundary layer's tab, then select the first radio button "County, Unitary Authority and Metropolitan" to select which boundaries to show. (Make sure you aren't too zoomed out or the boundaries won't show).

Comparing the Google Earth boundaries file from Groundspeak to the boundary file from Ordnanace survey there appears to be an almost perfect match - certainly as good as there is for most other countries.

Thus as far as I can see there is no practical obstacle to implementing this free boundary data file.

This has many advantages for project-gc -

1) Its an official dataset that matches Groundpseak's boundraries.

2) It retains the majority of counties in place already - primary exception being Scotland where project-gc inexplicably uses boundaries that only ever existed for a brief 21 year period in the late 20th century. Moving to actual current boundaries for Scotland rather than older flash in the pan boundaries that don't mean anything to anyone would be a big step forward.

3) It also means that as any boundaries shift in future you are basing your data on an official source that would be quickly updated.

4) It's entirely royalty free boundary files which may be freely used on a commercial site such as project-gc without requiring negotiations or explicit consent.

Given all these advantages is there any timescale for being able to import these boundaries so we in the UK and particularly those of us in Scotland can benefit from accurate meaningful boundaries?

Is there a Shapefile of boundaries available.

Thu, 24 Sep 2015 11:30:42 +0000

On the Profile Stats tab called Map it shows the Regions & Counties for each country on a map. Is there a shapefile (or similar format file) available for download that contains this boundary information that I could use for personal use?