bangladesh

India–Bangladesh enclaves

August 29, 2016

We recently came across this humorous take on the complicated border between India and Bangladesh. The video mentions that India and Bangladesh had agreed to swap enclaves in 2015 in an effort to simplify the situation. Wikipedia says the same and states that the agreement was ratified on June 6th 2015 and that the physical exchange of enclaves would be implemented in phases between 31 July 2015 and 30 June 2016. So, we immediately had a look in Google Earth, but found all the enclaves still displayed. Google Earth gets its map data, such as roads and borders from Google Maps, but it can often take some time for changes to get to Google Earth. However, in this case Google Maps also shows all the enclaves.

India–Bangladesh border – Google Maps.

So, we checked various other mapping services and found that:
– MapQuest and Open Street Map show the same borders as each other and we believe they share the same data. They do not show all the enclaves that Google Maps does, but do appear to show two large enclaves named Dahagram and Jote Nijjama (names from Google Maps).
– Bing Maps and Here appear to have identical border data and show no enclaves at all. In addition the borders do not exactly match the other services. They are generally lower resolution but not all the differences can be easily attributed to this.

India–Bangladesh border – Bing Maps.

India–Bangladesh border – Here.

India–Bangladesh border – Map Quest.

India–Bangladesh border – Open Street Map.

So which are correct, and where does one get the official border data from? It must be noted that the enclaves along the India-Bangladesh border were not disputed borders, just very complicated ones (prior to the enclave swap). If the border was disputed then it would get even more complicated as there would be at least two ‘official’ versions of the border. In fact, India recently considered enacting a law to control how maps of India, including its borders are shown, with possible fines of up to 15 million dollars for violators.

Do any of our readers know whether all or some of the enclaves no-longer officially exist? It would appear the border can be edited in Google Map Maker, so we could fairly easily get the enclaves removed from Google Maps (and hence Google Earth) if we can find reliable information about which ones no-longer exist.

Another location with complicated borders is Baarle-Hertog, a municipality of Belgium, which consists of 24 separate exclaves inside the Netherlands. Baarle-Hertog has embraced the situation and made it into something of a tourist attraction.

Street View extended coverage and problems: Bangladesh and Mongolia

July 7, 2016

It’s been a couple of months since Kyrgyzstan got Street View, so we thought we would have a look at the changes since then. As you can see below, the main additions are a near doubling of area covered in Bangladesh and Mongolia.

Street View changes between May 9th, 2016 and July 7th, 2016. Red: new, Blue: previously existing. Large version.

However, we found that as of this writing, it is impossible to actually view the new Mongolia Street View. We tried with both Google Earth and Google Maps, both of which show the blue lines, but when you drop the ‘yellow man’ on the map, Google Earth just takes you to ‘ground level view’ and Google Maps does nothing. The older Mongolian Street View works, as does the fresh Bangladeshi Street View.

We also came across a great example of what to do if you just can’t wait for the Street View car. Notice the trail of blue dots in the screenshot below?

Google Maps user Wahidur Rahman has travelled along the road by bus and every so often captured a panoramic photo and uploaded it to Street View. It was overcast, so the lighting was poor and the imagery isn’t as high resolution as typical Street View, but it is certainly better than nothing.

See in Google Maps

However, Google Earth does not currently show user-contributed Street View, so the above imagery can only be viewed in Google Maps. It used to work in the past, but appears to have been broken when Google merged Google Views with Street View.

New Street View imagery in Bangladesh

February 9, 2015

The last major addition of Street View imagery to a new location was the addition of Argentina and an expansion of the Malaysian imagery in September last year.

Now Google has added Street View to Bangladesh. Thank you to GEB reader Martin for letting us know about this. The coverage is currently only in two cities, Chittagong and Dhaka. They are, however, Bangladesh’s two largest cities. According to Wikipedia Dhaka has a population of over 12 million people and is the 9th largest city in the world.

Bangladesh Street View coverage.

Some pretty impressive electrical wiring in Dhaka.See it in Street View here.

There have not been many other additions to Street View since September last year. We took a screen shot of the Street View map on September 26th, 2014 and have compared it to a screen shot from February 6th, 2015 and found both additions to Street View and apparently subtractions, too!

Additions to Street View (red areas).

Some Street View appears to have been been removed (red areas), but we suspect it is just variation in how Google displays street view coverage at that zoom level.