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I noticed that border between the US states of North and South Carolina is mis-registered in the western half of the two states. If you zoom in far enough, you will see two borders, one apparently follows counties and the other seems to follow the actual state borders (look in the vicinity of 35.1N, 82.7W). Since in the US, counties cannot cross state lines, one or the other is off. I can't say for sure which one, but this border is well known to be very curvy, and of the two the county boundaries look unnaturally straight in this area. I couldn't find any other US state borders that had this problem, so I don't know if it's a widespread/well-known artifact, or localized to just this area. I couldn't even suggest how to fix it, I just wanted to put this out there in case somebody can explain it or knows how to fix it.

asked 12 Nov '13, 19:26

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havenerK
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Can't find it right now but on, I think, the talk-us email list note that the border between those two states has just been re-surveyed for the first time in eons and a number of places (at least houses and business) are now deemed to be on the other side of the state line. Might want to verify the source of any data you use to correct the border(s) to assure that it is the latest.

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answered 12 Nov '13, 19:42

n76's gravatar image

n76
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1

See Thread about Admin Borders in the US on talk-us from November 2013. Bottom line is that many US borders have been imported from various sources and without regard for what was already there, and now cleanup is required, but tedious.

(12 Nov '13, 19:55) Frederik Ramm ♦

But why 2 boundaries instead of one somewhat incorrect one? Since a man with two watches never knows what time it is, shouldn't the border just have one marginally incorrect depiction? The two states agreed on a boundary after a modern survey, but some parcels split by the new border will ultimately be adjudicated to one state or the other (2014). Seems like two sources of data were used for the current depiction of the border. Probably not worth fixing until the final adjudication occurs, I just found the extra lines annoying when I zoomed in to look at some (road) route detail.

(12 Nov '13, 20:21) havenerK

These borders do need to be merged into a single border. From the mailing lists - the best sources of a more accurate (pre-survey) border will be county data or TIGER 2013. Many counties in SC do not have an OSM-compatible open data policy, and would require specific work with each county to get them to release the data to an OSM-compatible license.

The new 2012-2013 border survey results are still officially in a proposed state. They are not yet available for inclusion into OSM because the exact effect on individual parcels must be agreed upon by both states before it can be represented in OSM.

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answered 13 Nov '13, 12:06

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Mike N
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question asked: 12 Nov '13, 19:26

question was seen: 8,828 times

last updated: 13 Nov '13, 12:06

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