Tag:boundary=exclave

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Public-images-osm logo.svg boundary = exclave
Baarle-Nassau - Baarle-Hertog-en.svg
Description
Part of territory surrounded by alien territory.
Group: boundaries
Used on these elements
should not be used on nodesshould not be used on waysshould not be used on areasmay be used on relations
Requires
Useful combination
Status: in use

An exclave is an isolated part of a territory that is surrounded by one or more other alien territories. [1]

Tagging exclaves as separate relations is useful if you have metadata for individual exclaves. This could for example allows users to search exclaves by name or number, and query which exclave a particular point in space belongs to.

How to map

Create a relation relation with tags type=boundary and boundary=exclave. Use Role outer for the border between the exclave and alien territory. Use Role inner for any counter-enclaves. Set other tags on the relation store useful metadata about the exclave, e.g. ref=* for a reference number or name=* for a name.

Example: Baarle

In and around the town of Baarle near the Dutch-Belgian border, Belgium has 22 exclaves and the Netherlands has 8 exclaves (7 of which are counter-enclaves). All these exclaves have reference numbers, stored as ref=* on the exclave relation.

Tagging exclaves is better than tagging enclaves

If you know places with this tag, verify if it could be tagged with another tag.
Automated edits are strongly discouraged unless you really know what you are doing!

An enclave can always be tagged either as boundary=exclave (if the enclave belongs to a larger territory) or as boundary=administrative (if the enclave itself is the entire territory), so boundary=enclave is never needed. Conversely, not every exclave is an enclave (if the exclave is surrounded by more than one alien territories). Therefore tagging with boundary=exclave is superior to tagging with boundary=enclave.