Could you update the polygons for Belgium once again?

Question

Hello,

during the last year I have, as usual, corrected in OSM several small mistakes concening the borders between Belgian municipalities, which are used as level 3 administartive units (counties) in PGC. Would you be kind enough to update the Belgian polygons, please, whenever you have the occasion? (No urgency)

Maybe you could, instead of using OSM, download them from here: http://www.ngi.be/FR/FR1-5-2.shtm. It’s the official Belgian National Geographical Institute, which offers a free download of the official vectors, so this would solve the problem once and for all (as long as administrative boundaries don’t change, obviously).

Thanks a lot and happy caching,

k+gw+a

Comments

The problem is probably not where to download it, but the license. I do not understand a word at that page, but I assume the use would be somehow limited.

---

PGC can not use the official data because the whole of Europe is in OSM boundary data to avoid mismatch between the different countries.

---

@ Jakuje: If you want, I could write them an email to ask what the conditions would be.

---

@ vogelbird: If this is really a problem and if the question of the licensing could be clarified, maybe you could still use the outer borers of Belgium from OSM, but the internal divisions from the site?

---

Generally, if the information is available under compatible license or permissions to use it in OSM is provided, the best would be to fix the issues directly in OSM so that everyone using OSM does not have to have this discussion. If you never contributed to the OSM and do not know how to do that, I recommend starting a discussion on the openstreetmap mailing lists (here is a belgium one). Local people will hopefully be able to help you there:
https://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-be

---

The discussion in the OSM forum about this issue was rather inconclusive, and there were some arguments against importing the data into OSM, which did not really convince me, but there you go. So, I’ll continue fixing the mistakes manually where I see them. As quite a number of those corrections have accumulated since the last update of the Belgian polygons on PGC, would you be kind enough, whenever you have time, to update them once again? Thanks a lot for all you help!

Answer 1

I am not sure whether you had seen my latest comment in this thread about half a year ago. Anyway, I have the feeling that the Belgian polygons have not been updated for two years. As in the meantime I have fixed quite a number of mistakes regarding the municipal boundaries in OSM, maybe, whenever the occasion arises, you could be kind enough to update the polygons? Thanks a lot!