On Thu, Oct 3, 2013 at 6:52 AM, Christian Quest <cqu...@openstreetmap.fr>wrote:
> UK level 4 is on the maritime borders (island culture ?) where most other > European countries stop on the coastline... tagging bio-diversity is not > helpful ! > This is actually another point to consider when extracting admin boundaries from OSM data. My personal view is that the admin boundary marks the boundary where the administrative entity exercises jurisdiction. Under UNCLOS, nations are allowed to exercise full sovereignty over internal waters (which includes water seaward of the coastline but within the baselines) and almost full sovereignty (foreign ships are allowed "innocent passage") for territorial waters (up to 12 nautical miles from the baselines). So I think that using the maritime boundaries as the admin_level=2 boundary is not incorrect and this is reflected in OSM. Use of maritime boundaries for admin_level=3 and higher (such as with UK) depends on how the particular nation interprets its internal maritime/fisheries laws. In my country, we have "municipal waters" which can be up to 15 kilometers from the shoreline and that's where municipalities can exercise jurisdiction.
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