WikiProject Burkina Faso/subdivisions

National borders (admin_level=2)

Régions (admin_level=4)

The content of this section is transcluded from the /regions subpage.

Requête Overpass Turbo pour toutes les données actuelles des régions et afficher une carte

Provinces (admin_level=5)

The content of this section is transcluded from the /provinces subpage.

Notes:

• The names of capitals of provinces that are also capitals of regions (above) are displayed with bold characters.
• Some provinces or their capital cities have several orthographies, the Capital city column shows the one currently used by INSD.bf, the other ones is in the Alternate name(s) column (and have been used by INSD.bf in older reports; they may still be used).
• The existing boundary relations are now all defined the node with the admin_center role for the place of the capital city (chef-lieu in French), but with their borders defined with limited resolution (within 1 km). These borders need further adjustments by checking all the villages they should include. This requires first subdiviing them in their departments and listing all their missing villages. Then some borders can be more acurately defined by locating the rivers or some other physical features that traditionally separate them. However most villages can be correctly found now in the correct province and trhis already helps disambiguating them as there are lots of homonyms. For further disambiguation we will still need to define the border of their departments.

Requête Overpass Turbo pour toutes les données actuelles des provinces et afficher une carte

Départements / communes (admin_level=6)

Because of its size, most of this section can no longer included here, it is located in the /communes subpage. Within the 351 "départements" in Burkina Faso (in 2012):

• 2 are "communes urbaines à statut particulier" (subdivided into "arrondissements" grouping unnamed numbered urban sectors and named villages).
• 49 are "communes urbaines" (subdivided into unnamed numbered urban sectors and named villages)
• 302 are "communes rurales" (subdivided into villages)

However these 351 "communes" (municipalities) only cover the urbanized area (cities and villages) of their (homonymous) department. The rest of the department is managed by the state. We should delimit these urbanized areas. For this reason, the boundaries of departments are indicative and only made to surround and separate villages in relevant groups. We should however delimit precisely all urban sectors.

TODO: In May 2016, new municipal election took places and new communes were added by splitting some of them to reach a total of 363 communes.

Arrondissements (urban districts, admin_level=7)

• TODO: map them as in OSM as "districts" in the urban municipalities (communes urbaines, which are départements) of the cities of Ouagadougou and Bobo-Dioulasso (which are mapped in OSM both as "cities" and officially as départements)
• The other urban municipalites (even if some of them qualify as cities in OSM) and all other rural municipalites (communes rurales, which are départements) are not subdivided in arrondissements.
• Note that arrondissements are splitting the main city of the department in several parts, but they may also contain (in Bobo-Dioulasso) other surrounding villages that are not part of the main city. Technically, these arrondissements (in the department of Bobo-Dioulasso) are not subdivisions of the city, but subdivisions of the department, and the main city is not a subdivision of the department or arrondissement but the group of all urban sectors in all arrondissements of the department.

Cities, towns and administrative villages (admin_level=8)

A commune is grouping all cities, towns and/or villages in the department of the same name, but do not cover the full territory of the department. Their urban extension in the department is controled by the local representant of the national state in the department. The rest of the department is often a very large rural area where villages and towns are enclaved.

Basically, if we define the borders of localities (cities, towns, villages and hamlets), they must be limited to the urbanized area and tagged with admin_level=8, and named according to the locality. These areas may be also tagged with landuse=residential if they cover these urbanized areas. Each area will have a place=* node giving the name of the locality.

Note that even in departments that are urban municipalities, there are some rural areas and villages in those rural area. But national statistics frequently do not distinguish each village in the rural areas surrounding towns and cities, except in data related to municipal elections or to traditional village developement councils. In the best case, data is only available per department (commune) or per arrondissement.

So most villages won't have borders in OSM, unless there's local data on their precise extension. Most of them will be mapped only as nodes within their department/commune.

About 8,400 villages are counted by the INSD : they could be mapped only as nodes (notably in rural municipalities, or for small kernels of population around cities and towns); but they are not subdivided : these administrative villages should still be mapped in OSM (with their borders if possible) with admin_level 8. All of them should map to a "place=village" in OSM (population between 100 and 3,000 inhabitants).

But very small villages which are not administrative villages should be mapped with "place=hamlet", most often as nodes only (no border defined officially, but this could be landuse=redidential polygons), and "isolated dwellings" in OSM should only be mapped as nodes (or only on a single building polygon). They should not have any "admin_level" defined on them. There's no official population statistics on them as they are counted as part of adminsitrative villages. When former villages are now part of urban sectors (in urban municipalities), they are not administrative villages and should not be mapped as "place=village" but may be mapped as "suburbs".

Urban sectors (admin_level=9)

This includes sectors (secteurs in French for the INSD) which are splitting the main city or town of each urban municipality, for which the INSD provides specific census data. The threshold of population for defining them (only in urban municipalities) is above 1,000 inhabitants per sector: most of them would still not qualify as "place=town" in OSM, but only as "place=suburb" as their population is in the range between about 3,000 and 10,000 inhabitants in cities, or between 1,000 and 5,000 inhabitants in towns, and because these urban "sectors" are officially distinguished from rural "villages".