Geospatial issues: False positives when testing country names against coordinates

11633
Reporter: ahahn
Assignee: mblissett
Type: Bug
Summary: Geospatial issues: False positives when testing country names against coordinates
Priority: Major
Status: Open
Created: 2012-07-27 16:21:00.879
Updated: 2017-10-06 15:30:48.799
        
Description: With coordinates close to a country's borders, records are flagged as erroneous (country name does not match coordinates) even when the coordinates actually do fall within the country.

examples (dataset http://data.gbif.org/datasets/resource/14157):
50.966774,14.903023 (is Germany; interpreted as Poland?)
51.154896,14.994188 (is Germany; interpreted as Poland?)
47.736813,8.44924 (is Germany; interpreted as Switzerland?)
50.9664,14.9022 (is Germany; interpreted as Poland?)

This is most likely due to the shapefiles used at interpretation time not exactly following the borders, but cutting across minor sections of the map.

Proposed solution: add a degree of fuzzyness to the interpretation, allowing a certain deviation from the shapefiles before error reporting cuts in.]]>
    

Author: omeyn@gbif.org
Comment: There is a fuzziness feature already implemented (for the Isle of Man as UK problem) which can probably solve this. Needs investigating though.
Created: 2013-12-17 13:59:09.113
Updated: 2013-12-17 13:59:09.113

Author: mblissett
Comment: There is some fuzziness in the interpretation, but thinking about it, I don't remember seeing any tests.  It would be good to check it actually works, as currently implemented.
Created: 2016-02-05 16:32:16.736
Updated: 2016-02-05 16:32:16.736