Steve, It needn't be parishes. For population data it looks as though I can get down to ward level with up-to-date numbers from ONS. http://www.statistics.gov.uk/statbase/Product.asp?vlnk=13893
Looking at the ONS lists there are about 9,000 wards in England (and about 10,000 parishes). It's going to take a while to trace them all! More importantly it seems to me that this will only work when the boundaries are meaningful to the community at large. I used the term "settlement" in that sense, as a loose catchall for any city, town, village, or suburb that was meaningful. The Opencyclemap locations seem to take a similar approach, and seemed like a good starting point. As an example, from the ONS lists, in Medway the wards are: Chatham Central Cuxton and Halling Gillingham North Gillingham South Hempstead and Wigmore Lordswood and Capstone Luton and Wayfield Peninsula Princes Park Rainham Central Rainham North Rainham South River Rochester East Rochester South and Horsted Rochester West Strood North Strood Rural Strood South Twydall Walderslade Watling I don't know the Medway area, so I'm not sure how these wards translate into "settlements" - but my guess from the names is that Gillingham, Rainham, Rochester and Strood are "settlements" that are subdivided into smaller wards. Cuxton, Halling, Lordswood and so on look like smaller settlements that have been combined into wards, and some of the others (Peninsula, River) might not correspond to a settlement or suburb of a settlement that people would recognise. That seems to be the kind of mix we have round here. In other words, there isn't always a ward boundary that corresponds to a recognisable settlement, but where there is a ward (or district council boundary) that corresponds to a recognisable settlement I can use it to classify the apparent level of coverage on the map. I don't think we want to start inventing our own system of boundaries, so I'm not quite sure where that leaves us elsewhere. At the moment the best I can suggest is to do what makes sense locally with the boundaries that are available. On the next round of data crunching I'll do my best to make use of all the admin boundaries in the map that I am able to match up with population figures. _______________________________________________ Talk-GB mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openstreetmap.org/listinfo/talk-gb
