OpenStreetMap: Admin_level for All Countries(wiki.openstreetmap.org) |
OpenStreetMap: Admin_level for All Countries(wiki.openstreetmap.org) |
It powers painless adding of maps to so many products, painless offline data analytics and joins (I built https://wildpocket.com/ by joining OSM to iNaturalist data).
Truly incredible and under appreciated by general public. I love street complete, it opens up OSM to so many beginners with the simple UX. Think there's a big markets for "beginner-friendly" OSM work - I've prototyped https://mapmender.com/ to help map the "last mile" routes for emergency response that are inherently hard to keep updated
Fun fact: when you think of boundary disputes, two things tend to be assumed. One, this only happens in 'certain' countries. Two, this always means more than one country claims the same piece of land.
As for one: even the Netherlands and Germany claim the same bit of sea. Boundary status: unresolved (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/19478817#map=12/53.56...), but don't worry, we're friends and allies these days.
As for two: because of complex reasons to with their eventual bullshit bargaining position, there are several slivers of land wedged between the respectively claimed borders of Serbia and Croatia which belong to… nobody¹ (https://www.openstreetmap.org/relation/19478817). Although the local Serbian border patrols will gladly point their rifles in your general direction to point out that this does not, in fact, mean you get to be there as far as they're concerned.
1: Head-line grabbing claims by assorted dreamers notwithstanding; hence Verdis.
California entered the union in 1850 and it's north-eastern boundary was defined a specific way(120 degrees west of Greenwich), Nevada entered 14 years later and it's western boundary was defined with a different method(43 degrees west of Washington), at the time it was thought these two methods were equivalent, but this was later proved otherwise. It appears the main strip got resolved but there is still a weird triangular strip of land on the diagonal claimed by both sides. There were also a number of surveying mistakes, but the root of the problem appears to be the accepted but incompatible definitions. It turns out that congress has no authority to change state borders once they are set(Somehow this both surprised me and made total sense at the same time), so the states themselves have to resolve it. There is currently an "agreement" on how to interpret the border, but neither state has changed it's constitution so the dispute is still technically ongoing.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lake_Tahoe#Interstate_boundary...
Usually these weird chunks of land that lay unclaimed are usually the result of agreements or contests around more valuable chunks of land that cause voids in the border - sometimes just due to historical oversight.
It's amazing that something like this exists.