Finding a Muban

A reader asked me for help to find the location of one specific village, of which he only knew the name and the district. While Google Maps shows village names in some areas of Thailand, in this case it was of no help, only the Tambon center was named. One possible way would be find a good paper of the area, but from my experience all the maps found in bookstores are much inferior in mapping quality to those I am used in Europe. The official ones from the Royal Survey Department are not so easy to get.

However, I guess I could solve the problem just with the help of some Google searching, though not as directly as it could be. The first step was to find the Tambon, which is especially important in this case, as Kantharalak district in Sisaket province has a total of 20 Tambon and 274 administrative villages. Google found the website Sisaket Database, which has pages for each district, and on each of those a complete list of the villages. So for Kantharalak that page - which also has a much more detailed district history than amphoe.com - gave me that Ban Ta Choi (บ้านตาจ้อย) is Mu 13 of Kut Salo subdistrict.

The TAO of Kut Salo has a relatively good website, but the only information it has on the villages is a table with the village headmen, but no map, not even a sketch map. The next try was the Excel sheet from DOPA, where the local authorities were supposed to fill in the coordinates for each Muban. But for this Muban, the sheet shows the UTM coordinates 836421 1859984 - but these are totally bogus and I wasn't able to convert them into anything near the Tambon.

Normally I would be stuck now, since this sheets are my only more-or-less complete list of coordinates. But by luck Google found another source - the Department of Groundwater Resources has a list of 20 wells in Kut Salo, and the details for the one in Ban Ta Choi has the UTM coordinates 48P 0482109 1618585. This transforms to 14.6435°N 104.8299°E, in the southeastern part of the subdistrict. The final confirmation is the screenshot from PointAsia which is linked from the well detail page, which shows the village 500 m southeast of the well coordinates labeled as Ban Ta Choi. And only later my reader remembered that photo he took with the village name, which would have saved me the first steps as village number and Tambon are on that sign as well.

But please do not send me tons of similar requests now, it was fun to do it once, but doing it daily won't be for sure. This only shows how much those Excel sheets were needed, if only they contain correct coordinates and are easier accessible.

Highest number of provinces

As very shortly there will be a new 77th (or actually 76th) province, one question which might someone ask is whether this is the highest number of provinces in Thailand ever. I had written about the province changes since 1910 before, but not mentioned the actual numbers in that posting.

While it seems that the number of provinces is only rising, this is only true since 1972, which was the last time a province was abolished. Or to be exact, two provinces were abolished at that time, and the new special administrative area of Bangkok was created, and its this special status of Bangkok which makes the Bueng Kan just the 76th province, and not the 77th as almost all media reports.

However, the only real big decrease in number of provinces was in 1932, when not only several of the Monthon were abolished, but also 8 provinces. Before this act, there were 77 provinces in Thailand already. And since in 1926 the province Kabinburi was abolished, there were 78 province from the end of the Thesaphiban reforms. Therefore, there needs to be another province to be back to original number of provinces, so maybe if the province Fang gets created Thailand will be back at 78.

In the chart above I have plotted the number of provinces for each year. In orange are the four provinces in the occupied areas during World War II, otherwise the time of the lowest number of provinces due to the merger of the provinces surrounding Bangkok.

Census 2010 press release

While I am still waiting for the data of last year's census, I found a small tidbit on the census at an unexpected location - a magazine on postal applications, which for whatever reason makes it into my work office. Browsing through it I stumbled on a short article - or probably more correct a press release - from Top Image Systems who were awarded contract with the National Statistics Office (NSO) to scan and process 38 million forms from the census.

To quote from the press release directly

The NSO was looking for a system that could rapidly process the large document quantities involved in the census without compromising accuracy. An intensive selection procedure was carried out, including proof of concept (POC) and benchmark testing; following the initial tender process, eFLOW was selected to take part in a pilot program that began in 2009.
[...]
Scanning will be carried out locally in 76 provinces throughout Thailand, with central processing taking place in Bangkok. Approximately 38 million documents will be processed by eFLOW during the census. In addition, the NSO will continue using eFLOW to process 8 million general survey forms a year.

I haven't heard much about the census anymore - on the website of NSO specifically on the 2010 census the latest news is from December 2009 - and apparently the data processing isn't done yet, even no preliminary on the website either. I cannot compare with the 2000 census, as when I first looked for data there it was already 2003/2004, but don't know when the data was actually made available online then. I just hope we don't have to wait till 2014 for the results of this census...

Constituency number changes

2007 electoral regions

With the constitutional amendments, different formula for the number of seat in parliament given by a party list vs. the number of directly elected constituency MPs were discussed. In the 2007 election, it had 400 constituencies and another 80 party list, which were calculated for 8 separate regions. The ratios in discussion now were either a 400:100 ratio or the now preferred 375:125 ratio, as well as a few others but all with either 375 or 400 constituency. Of course such changes directly prompt criticism of adjusting the law to fit party interests, which due to the better performance of the Democratic Party in the party list votes is not totally baseless. However, for the number of constituencies these are spread to the provinces according to a simple formula, so here only minor preferences for one party should be expected.

Since I already programmed the algorithm for calculating the number of constituencies per province, it's easy for me to compare the two proposed numbers. The only thing I had to program for an easier comparison was to sum up the numbers for regions. To keep the table short I have only used the simple regions as defined by the National Statistics Office, with the northern region already starting at Nakhon Sawan.

	South	Central	Northeast	North
375	52	128	126	69
	13.9%	34.1%	33.6%	18.4%
400	57	133	134	76
	14.3	33.3%	33.5%	19.0%

As one can see, the Northeast looses most constituencies in the reduction from 400 to 375, but that's of course simply to due the fact that this area has so many constituencies. So to really compare, one should check the percentage values, which show that the South and especially the North loose, while the Central wins. I have done the calculation with the population numbers as of January 1 2009.

The weight of each vote depends on the province, due to the fact that constituencies have to be within one province there's inevitably quite some inequality - whereas in Ang Thong there are 142403 citizen per MP, in Nakhon Nayok the number is 251683 (calculated for 375 constituency MPs). With 400 constituency MPs, Nakhon Nayok would instead be nearly at the top of the list with 125841 citizen per MP, as it is one of the provinces which loose a constituency in the reduction of numbers.

While all reports focus on the numbers only, none mentions whether the electoral regions will be kept or dropped with the amendments. The new value of 125 could only be divided into 5 regions, so there has to be a change in these regions for sure. The lack of mentioning them in the news makes me think they will be dropped altogether. But guess I will only know for sure after the amendments are accepted in a joint meeting of house of representatives and senate on February 11th.

Hua Hin and Cha-Am to become a special administrative area

Cha-Am municipality office

While the law to make Mae Sot a special administrative area is apparently still in the drafting process, in the next meeting of the cabinet on February 8 another special administrative area will be discussed. The touristic centers of Hua Hin and Cha-Am are to be merged into one such unit to allow a better management of the area.

Whereas the article at The Nation can be understood that the two districts might become something like a new province

Interior Minister Chaovarat Chanweerakul will next Tuesday seek Cabinet approval to merge the two districts and put them under a special administration scheme. Hua Hin, where the Klai Kangwon Palace is located, currently comes under the jurisdiction of Prachuap Khiri Khan province, while Cha-am is in Phetchaburi province.

Hua Hin municipality office

the Thai language articles are more detailed but not about the administrative details. But at least the use the term "องค์กรปกครองส่วนท้องถิ่นรูปแบบพิเศษ", thus it sounds like a similar structure with Mae Sot and the already existing special administrative area of Pattaya. I only hope the transcript of the cabinet meeting will have some more details, as one thing special about this one is the fact that it would be the first local government unit spread between two provinces. So one question is whether only the two municipalities Cha-Am and Hua Hin will be merged, or the whole districts as The Nation claims. Or is it maybe even a kind of resurrection of the province plan started in the last weeks before Thaksin was ousted in the 2006 coup, and the new entity will be a copy of the special administrative area of Bangkok, which is both a local administration as well as at province level?

Bueng Kan and the Senate

I was a little bit to hasty last week when I announced that Bueng Kan was done with the parliamentary process already. While it was approved by the House of Representatives, I forgot that the Senate also has to approve it, which was done on January 31st with 85:5 votes. And, as Khun Wisarut writes in the 2bangkok forum, the original law will be amended to be effective right on the next day after it is published in the Royal Gazette instead of the 90 days originally planned.

The reason for this hurry to make the province effective is the end of term for the appointed members of Senate on February 18 - as part of the transitory sections of the constitution the first term of appointed senators is only three years and not six. I wasn't aware of this transitory rule, which means that any new province might have to wait for nine years till it gets their own senator - if Bueng Kan get effective after new 74 appointed senators are chosen and endorsed, there next round of senator elections can only choose 76 senators, as the constitution states there are a maximum of 150 senators, and the appointed senators have a term of six years then as well. Thus only when in the next round of appointments one senatorial seat is left vacant there will be a space in the election three years after the appointments.

Provincal marker stones and their accuracy of coordinates

In the latest issue of the geo: magazine I stumbled on an article titled "Are WGS84 and ETRS89 really identical?". Though the article is basically an advert for an application to convert between the two coordinate systems, the interesting fact which I wasn't aware of before is that additionally the the coordinate system WGS84 used by GPS there's the ETRS89 used in Europe simply to avoid the change of coordinates due to continental shift. With an annual movement of the Eurasian Plate of 2.5 cm the difference between the two coordinate frames will grow by one meter every 40 years. As GPS has an accuracy of about 10 meters, the difference between the two systems is not that relevant for most applications, though there are of course some few where a few centimeter make a difference.

While I haven't found values for the plate movements relative to WGS84 for any location in Thailand, since (southern) Thailand is on the Sunda Plate together with Singapore, the movement of an observatory there can give an idea for the speed further north. There it has a movement of 6 mm per year in latitude and 28 mm in longitude, a similar speed value as for Europe, so also there it's about one meter every 40 years.

Now to relate this with the administrative subdivisions, in 2008 I found a marker within the administrative center of Surat Thani, located between province hall and provincial court. This marker shown in the photo has inscribed the location of itself, both with longitude and latitude in degrees as well as the coordinates in the UTM system. Due to the reflections its not easy to read in the photo, but the values give a latitude of 9° 7' 58.32484'' North and a longitude of 99° 19' 53.90800'' East in WGS84. The UTM values are a Northing of 1,009,256.493 and an Easting of 536,772.956 in the Indian 1975 frame. As the UTM coordinates are measured in meters one can directly see the accuracy of the coordinate, which is 1 Millimeter! 0.00001 arcseconds at the equator correspond to 0.3 Millimeter, so even more accuracy. Given the above words of plate movement, as well as the inherit inaccuracy of GPS both values have a ridiculous accuracy, anything below one meter I cannot believe. I really wonder if any geographer was involved in the creation of this marker and how they came up with the last digits of these numbers, or if they were pressed by some official who though more accuracy is better, and any reason they last digits are simply nonsense were overheard.

When I was looking for the location of PAO office in Trang, I noticed that in panoramio someone had uploaded photos of a very similar stone located right in front of the PAO office, on the backside of the province hall. On the detail view one can see the same ridiculous accuracy of the coordinates. Though I had visited a few more province hall, I haven't noticed such a stone at any other than Surat Thani; would be interesting to know which other province halls have one, or even get some more background on how these markers were created.