2020 Swiss county mergers

Question

Hi

When I look for caches by county in Switzerland (either in "map counties" or with "map compare") I still see a number of  counties which no longer exist since the merger on 01.01.2020. E.g:
- Villaz-Saint-Pierre and La Folliaz merged to the new municipality of Villaz
- Coreserey, Noréaz, Prez-vers-Noréaz merged to the new municipality of Prez

The official Swiss maps have been updated::
https://www.atlas.bfs.admin.ch/maps/13/de/15078_229_228_227/23829.html

If I understand correctly, OSM has also updated their maps:
https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Switzerland/2020_Municipality_Mergers

When will the information be updated in the PGC maps?

Thank you for your help.

Answer 1

Since you seem a bit more familiar with the local data. Could you do us a favor and check https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/ and see if their data is up-to-date?

That's our source for polygon data. Sadly it hasn't been updated since 18th of January though. We are also waiting on data for Norway. Also several merges.

A more direct answer to the question itself is that data such as this will be updated when:
1) We are notified about changes (which you just did).
2) Data in OSM is updated. That's our source for almost all countries at least.
3) The data has been imported in https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/ . This have only taken a few days before, we are not sure why there is a delay this year. We have been trying to contact the owner, but this far without success.

Comments

Thank you for the answer. I have looked at the map of
https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/

In this wambacher map the boundaries are updated (I have however only checked 4 new municipalities Prez, Villaz, Thurnen and Steffisburg - zooming in and out, as I cannot enable "OAuth." because I am not a registered OSM-User).
In the general OSM maps the boundaries are also updated

May I therefore assume that the PGC maps can be updated shortly?
(according to official Swiss maps, 2202 counties, vs 2227 counties shown in the PGC maps)

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We will then try to look into it the coming week.

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This is very likely going to continue as 2202 is still a very large number, compared to the size of Switzerland (41285 km2 so counties are less than 20 km2 on average).

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Yes, the mergers of municipilities is an ongoing process, the next ones will however only be implemented in 2021.
The details of planned mergers for 2021 to 2023 can be looked up here:
https://www.bfs.admin.ch/bfsstatic/dam/assets/12307174/master

In the meantime it would still be nice to have correct boundaries (and counties) in the PGC maps, e.g. for county challenges.

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Following up on your note of 28 March 2020, I notice that PGC maps and OSM maps are updated with the correct boundaries for Switzerland and its counties, with one exception: In both maps the boundary of Thusis is shown alternating Mutten and Thusis, although Mutten merged with Thusis on 01.01.2018.

This said, the polygons in the PGC "Map Counties" and the county related statistics (e.g. "Caches per Area", "Map Compare") in PGC are not correct, as they still show the municipalities as at 31.12.2019 (+ Mutten who was merged into Thusis on 01.01.18).

As of 01.01.2020 Switzerland has 2202 minicipalities + 44 territories not attributable to any county = 2246.

PGC Data shows 2227 Swiss counties, being 2213 municipalities +  14 (of 44) territories not attributable to any municipality, i.e.:
Brienzersee (2), Bielersee (BE) (2), Thunersee (2),
Lac de Neuchâtel (FR) (10), Staatswald Galm (10),
Comunanza Cadenazzo/Monteceneri (21), Comunanza Capriasca/Valcolla (21), Lago Maggiore(TI) (21), Lago di Lugano (21),
Lac de Neuchâtel (VD) (22), Lac de Morat (VD) (22),
Lac Léman (VS) (23)
Bielersee (NE) (24), Lac de Neuchâtel (NE) (24))

Assuming that PGC will keep the 14 additional territories, it should show 2216 counties (instead of 2227), due to the following mergers per 01.01.2020 (in brackets the wrong counties in PGC):

Canton Bern (2): new Thurnen (in PGC still: Kirchenthurnen, Lohnstorf, Mühlethurnen)
Canton Bern (2): new only Steffisburg (in PGC still: Schwendibach, Steffisburg )
Canton Bern (2): new only Niederbipp (in PGC still: Niederbipp, Wolfisberg)
Canton Luzern (3): new only Altishofen (in PGC still: Altishofen, Ebersecken)
Canton Fribourg (10): new Villaz (in PGC still: La Folliaz, Villaz-Saint-Pierre)
Canton Fribourg (10):new Prez (in PGC still: Corserey, Noréaz, Prez-vers-Noréaz)
Canton Graubünden (18): new only Chur (in PGC still : Chur, Maladers)
Canton Graubünden (18): new only Thusis (in PGC still: Mutten, Thusis)
Canton Aargau (19): new only Brugg (in PGC still: Brugg, Schinznach-Bad)    

Could you please look into this matter and arrange for the corrections?

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@Dusky-Jo Thanks, that was a very thorough list.

Our problem is that the site (https://wambachers-osm.website/boundaries/) we have used to export data from OSM doesn't exist anymore. It took us a while to realize.

At first we thought OSM itself wasn't updated. But then in March we realized that the data on the site was from 18th January, it normally updated daily or similar. After yet another few weeks the site went dead. Meanwhile we tried to contact the author, who we have been in contact with before, no response.

After the site had been dead for a week or two we started to dig around in the OSM community. It turned out that the author of the site had stepped down due to lack of time and that the site won't exist anymore.

This is a huge setback for us, we need a new method to export Administrative boundaries from OSM into Geojson or similar. We have spent quite a lot of time trying to find new options, but this far no luck.

The only current lead we have is that the source code for the mentioned site is open source. The latest version isn't committed online though. We will try to install our own version of the site and keep the OSM data updated. But there are are a few potential problems.
* We do not know how much work it is to maintain that data. It could be that it's not feasible.
* We do not know how complete the source code/data is. This could potentially be something that requires way too much time.
* It requires a lot of hardware. Probably around 2 TB of SSD storage to start with. An import of the complete OSM data will take two days for a decent computer. We have SSD disks enough to make a test on a temporary setup, but we haven't had the time to test it yet.

If anyone has a good idea of how to extract administrative boundaries from OSM, it's most welcome. One great upside with mentioned site is that the data was very visible to the user. The borders existed in a tree and could be turned on/off to see where they were located on a map, and also their coverage. Without a visual representation, it will be harder to see which administrative levels are relevant and complete.

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I see that the boundaries have now been corrected and the counties (+territories not attributable to any municipality) have been updated. It has taken a while but all the counties now match with the official Swiss Federal maps - WELL DONE GUYS.