Wrong attributions to counties

Question

Good evening,

I use the maps on PGC very often. While most of the times caches are attributed to the correct region and county – even if the CO has wrongly attributed the cache in the listing – I sometimes see that PGC, too, lists a cache in the wrong geographical area.

Sometimes this seems to be due to inaccurate borders in Openstreetmap. E. g. PGC lists GC681K3 as being in Belgium/Vlaams-Brabant/Overijse. In reality it is in Belgium/Vlaams-Brabant/Hoeilaart – even if by a few metres only. I saw that the border indicated in Openstreetmap was not correct and amended it a couple of weeks ago to reflect the official border used by the Belgian cadastre (http://ccff02.minfin.fgov.be/cadgisweb/?local=fr_BE). I expected therefore that the attribution of the cache would also change in PGC but this is not the case. Is there a reason why this is so?

Sometimes a cache is wrongly attributed for no apparent reason at all. PGC lists e.g. GC37E8C as being in Belgium/Vlaams-Brabant/Kortenberg, but in reality it is in Belgium/Vlaams-Brabant/Herent. Openstreetmap shows the correct border here in line with the official one from the cadastre. This cache is 160 m from the "county" boundary, thus not even very close. No idea why this shows in the wrong county.

Of course, such cases are not really important, but they are still annoying because they disturb some statistics, e.g. "at least one cache per county" or "all caches in a given county". Is there a general method what to do in such cases of wrong attribution?

Thanks,

k+gw+a

Comments

Are all the issues you have seen about Belgium? If so we can plan a new import for Belgium. It was last imported at the 15th of October 2015.

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As I am currently mostly caching in Belgium the answer is yes. I might have come across similar cases in other countries, but I have only recently (probably after 15 October 2015) started to note these issues and to correct the administrative borders on OSM where necessary. Thus, a new import for Belgium would be very welcome. Thanks a lot!

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We have updated the polygon data to the latest of OSM. Recalculating the position of the geocaches is still in progress though. It might take a few hours.

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Worked like a charm! All the issues I was aware of are resolved. Many thanks!

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Am I correct in assuming that the polygons for Belgium haven't been updated since May 2016? Just asking, because I have done a number of correction of the borders of the counties in OSM where caches are geographically wrongly attributed on PGC over the last year. So, if it is not too cumbersome, it would be great if you could update the Belgian polygons once again. Thanks a lot!

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Your assumption is correct. It's not something we do regularly. It's a bit of work, and a lot of computer resources behind it. The amount of manual work is about 1 hour for a country, when it works as it should. If the new data brings new issues, it could be a lot more, even days.

I'll try to look into Belgium again this week, if you haven't heard anything by the end of the week, please contact our support by clicking one of the orange support-buttons on the web, and refer to this QA thread. It's easier to keep track of things in the support system.

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The polygon data has been updated. The servers are now recalculating the locations for every single geocache in Belgium. Should be done within a few hours.

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And again it worked perfectly. Thanks a lot for your quick action!

Answer 1

Project-GC does not use map data "live" from OpenStreetMap. We perform an export of the map data for a complete country from OSM and import it in Project-GC. If the information in OSM changes we will eventually have use of that after we have imported data for that country again, but that is a process that takes some time and work.

Comments

Do I guess correctly then that its years since you last exported the map data for Scotland? As I pointed out elsewhere the map data for Scotland is 21 years old using "county" boundarys that havent existed in that time. The current admin_layer=6 boundaries are present in OSM and the https://osm.wno-edv-service.de/boundaries/  website that ganja1447 said was used for extracted data.

It would be great if these could be refreshed at some time to use boundaries that actually exist in Scotland rather than temporary relics that were abolished 21 years ago. Any chance of a refresh any time soon?

My reply at http://project-gc.com/qa/?qa=7961/any-plans-to-implement-improved-regions-for-uk includes info on the OSM id's that are admin_level 6 data for current regions in Scotland.